Tuesday, July 23, 2013

McCalls 6551 - easy summer dress

Finally, some garment sewing, right?

When in New York, I did pretty well resisting fabric, but showed no such restraint around patterns. JoAnns was having one of it's 99c sales, and I think I bought about 15 McCalls patterns. (Ahem.)

Hence and therefore, I thought it might be appropriate to sew one up.


I was originally attracted to McCalls 6551 because of the colour-block, hi-low hemline, but decided my fabric was most suited to version C - the scoop neck dress. Sewing-wise, everything was chugging along just fine till I attached the sleeves. Eeeks. Horrors. Those are not good sleeves, they looked really bizarre, stuck out in a super-weird Star-Trek like way, and were just honestly pretty horrid. I quickly ripped it out and attached a bias strip to finish the armsyce. Much better.


I'm always quite in two minds about dresses with sashes. I like the waist definition, but they always seem a bit messy to me. Same with this one. The dress isn't too sack-like without the belt, and I might end up leaving it off more often than not.


Sizing-wise - I made a small on top, medium on the bottom, and did petite adjustments at all the marked lines.


The fabric - a gift from my mom, many many years ago. 100% cotton, it's a woven yellow and red with the prettiest weave - looks orange from afar, but it's got a lot of detail in it. I love cotton to sew up - it irons well, cuts easy, and doesn't shift under the machine.

In summary:
Likes - scoop neck, the colour of this dress.
Dislikes - sleeves that got ripped out, sash.

Wearability - medium. I like it and will wear it, but it still remains a pretty ordinary summer dress. (Not a bad thing, that. Not everything needs to be special.) 

4 comments:

AllisonC said...

I love this kind of shape for the summer and I like this spicy orange colour too. Maybe try it with a purchased belt - woven or chain? and see if you like it better.

anuradha said...

Love the dress...specially the shape of the neck,orange looks good on you too.

Clio said...

Great color! I bet you'll get lots of use out of this even if it is rather simple.

Cation Designs said...

I really like this color on you! And I agree that not every dress needs to be spectacular...in fact, I wear my ho-hum ones more often because I feel like spectacular dresses need spectacular occasions.