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Lucinda September 5, 2012

Pattern Review: McCall’s 6552 [Linen Beach Cover-up]

Pattern: McCall’s 6552
Fabric: Linen/cotton print from Joann’s (clearance section!)
Size: Small

Location: Ogunquit Beach, Ogunquit, ME

The impracticality of this pattern for everyday wear did not dawn on me until I sat down at my computer to order fabric for the dress. It should have been pretty obvious to me immediately, considering that the picture of the model shows the neckline of this pattern plunging down past where one’s bra band would be (of course, she is clearly not wearing a bra in the picture). I pushed this pattern to the end of my pattern queue until recently, when I decided I wanted to make a new cover-up for the beach to take on vacation to Maine…hmm…perfect! Who cares about a low-low neckline when you have a swimsuit on?

Following the measurements on the envelope and picking the size that corresponded to me the closest, I cut out a size Small. In actuality I could have made an Extra Small to get a fit that wasn’t so billowy since there is a lot of ease, but it worked out ok in the end and I didn’t really mind the extra gathered fabric around the waist. I shortened the length of the pattern by quite a lot and toyed with the idea of shortening the sleeves, but I left them as is.

What’s cool about this pattern is that it’s made up of three major pieces: the skirt front, skirt back, and then the bodice piece, which folds over the shoulders and connects at the waist. The construction was super quick to stitch together and could have gone together in one night if I didn’t have to get up so early for work the following day. The casing for the drawstring is sewn in a way I like the best: the seam allowance of the skirt/bodice is pressed up towards the bodice and stitched down in place. This pattern was also a good refresher of my button-hole skills since it’s been a long time since I’ve sewn some!

It was perfect to wear to the beach during the week, especially on cooler, windy days when I didn’t want to wear my sleeveless cover-up, but it also was just as comfortable on some of the hotter days on the beach thanks to the linen fabric. I’d make another one of these next year for beach season, maybe with the short sleeves or sleeveless in a knit fabric. If you’re looking to make a cover-up like this but want more coverage, check out Coco’s adaptation of the bodice piece – I love how she redrafted it to be more modest and practical.

The only other thing I can think of making out of this pattern is a swanky dressing gown to go over a nightie, and maybe sashaying around my apartment wearing it with a wine glass in hand. Hmm, not a shabby idea…

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Lucinda August 13, 2012

Pattern Review: McCall’s 4868 [Promaballoona!]

Sparkly shoes!

Pattern: McCall’s 4868 (OOP)
Fabric: Cotton, Metro Textile in NYC
Size: 8-10-12

Shoes: Capparos
Necklace: gift from my sister (when I was in her wedding)
Clutch: Stila

If you haven’t read the fabulous blog Oona Balloona, do yourself a favor and get over there now. I’ll wait.

When Oona posted her idea to have a “Promaballoona” in honor of her birthday this year (how rad), it was the perfect excuse to make a fancy dress and getted dolled up. Plus, the timing was right spot on with a wedding that I was planning on going to this summer. Since Promaballoona and the wedding fell right smack dab in the sticky heat of early August, the key ideas were to keep the dress cool and breezy. When I stumbled across this fabric in NYC recently I knew what to make – it screamed “retro halter dress.” Perfect!

So a little backstory about me and prom…I never went. I always planned on what dress I wanted to wear (this one as a matter of fact. I sewed costumes for the spring play during my senior year of high school and made this dress for a few chorus girls), what color it would be, etc. but never got up the courage to ask someone (because everyone knows boys are chicken at that age. Most don’t grow out of it either. Le sigh.). It’s just as well, I ended up coming down with a cold that weekend and did some knitting instead. Looking back eight years later, I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss a thing. Except maybe some stupid drama that always seemed to happen at high school dances…yeah no thanks.

The Pattern

I went digging through my stash and since I was short on time to make this dress, I picked a pattern I made seven years ago, remembering that it went together fairly easily. I knew based on the original dress, I needed to make some alterations to the bodice pattern since it fit really loosely now.

Um…I had to use three different sizes to get the bodice to fit. Wowzers, I think that speaks volumes to the fact that muslins are a non-negotiable when it comes to sewing. It involved making a size 10 for the bodice, trying it on, pinning it where it was loose and letting it out where it was tight, and redrawing the stitching lines. When I laid the pattern pieces on top of my fitted muslin, I discovered that it was an 8 at the top, went out to a 10 for most of the bodice, and then to a 12 at the waist. But sewing is all about getting the garment to fit the body and not the body to fit the garment, that’s what I love about it.

And the laws of science also apply to sewing: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. By my altering of the bodice pieces, I had to change just about every other pattern piece except for the skirt. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as hard as it sounds even though at the time it was terrifying.

Showing off my mani

After all of the adjustments to the bodice, I thought I had a perfect fit, except for the fact that the band on the top of the bodice would gape out. I’d try and tie the dress higher up or lower, but it still didn’t fix the gape-age. I blame this on my lack of boobage, whatevs, but it triggered a memory as to why I made small tucks on the original dress bodice: the pattern did this the first time I made this as well. So as you can see in the picture above, I hand-stitched some tucks in place and it blends in just fine, also repeating the tucks in the back. No free show, thank you!

The Fabric

The fabric is a designer lightweight cotton with a weave that made it sheer like a voile. There’s also this really cool jaquard polka dot pattern woven throughout the fabric that looks neat when it catches the light, like in this picture of the fabric on my mom’s cutting table. I purchased a very thin white cotton to fully line the dress, attaching the lining to the top of the bodice band and hand stitching it to the invisible zipper and back bodice bands. It was a much better choice than a synthetic lining – it kept me nice and cool (relatively speaking) that muggy afternoon and felt better to wear.

Towards the end of the night. I opted for flip flops by that time.

I had a blast that night! It made me wish that we got dressed up like this more often, but then again, how often do you need to wear a tux and fancy dress? And while heels are great and all, they don’t lend themselves well to dancing after a few drinks.

Or kissing your date.

Hope you all had a great Promaballoona! Let’s do this again next year!

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Lucinda July 17, 2012

Sewcation 2012: Days 1 and 2

Ahhhh….a whole week on vacation, visiting my family, and nothing to do but sew! I figured this would be the week to tackle all of the summer sewing that I still have left to do, because come next month, I’ll be wrapping up all of the cute sundresses and skirts and moving on to Halloween sewing and fall dresses. It feels like summer is only a minute in New England.

This is round two on a halter dress that I made about seven years ago. It fit me fine then, but taking it out of my closet recently, I discovered it was quite big all around. I knew going into this that I would have to make a muslin and start completely from scratch on this one.

Well. I did get it to fit.

This muslin uses 3 sizes (!!) to get the right fit. I tweaked everything on this puppy! Took the sides in, let them out, added some width to the center back seam, cut part of the bust one size and the rest of it another. It ranges from a 8 up top all the way to a 12 where the waist starts. I don’t think I’ve sewn a single garment as crazy-all-over-the-place as this one. No wonder I have a hard time finding ready-to-wear dresses that fit me. Ah, but that’s why we sew, right? We get the garment to fit our bodies and not the other way around.

Don’t you love that fabric? It’s a cotton I scored last week at Metro Textile in NY while I was coming back from a business trip. It has a retro feel to it, which lends itself well to a halter-style dress. It’s also pretty sheer, like a voile, so I’m lining it with a thin white cotton. I need to get this done this week to wear to a wedding I’m going to in about two weeks. Plus, when I get back to MA, it’s all about packing and getting ready to move to my new apartment. I can’t wait!

So today is Day 3 of Sewcation 2012 and I’m stitching this baby up, plus also (possibly) starting a muslin on a easy-peasy empire waist sundress. I don’t think the muslin is going to be that involved and all I’ll need to do is move the bust dart up slightly. If I get these two dresses done, plus all of the cutting out/fusing/serging for two other projects, it’ll be mission accomplished this week.

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Lucinda May 29, 2012

McCall 6559 – Swirly Ruffled Sundress

Pattern: McCall 6559, altered
Fabric: rayon poly jersey from Gorgeous Fabrics
Size: 8-10?

Wedges: Born Concept
Sunnies: Rayban

This dress originally started out as a maxi dress, but now, as you can tell, it looks nothing like the dress on the pattern envelope. Why? Call it a happy accident: I cut out the dress thinking it would fit me just fine (I mean come on, it’s a simple knit tank dress) and when I finally tried it on, the neckline was indecently too low. Like, my-bra-peeking-out-can’t-cover-it-up too low.

Hmm. What to do.

That’s when I got the brainstorm for this cute little ruffled number! You could use any simple maxi dress pattern, but here’s how I altered mine:

1 – After I sewed the side seams (and took them in quite a bit…the 10, which is usually what I cut, wasn’t as tight as I liked it), I chopped off the top of the dress right underneath the armholes. This gave me a long, tubular dress shape.

2 – Then, I cut about 5″ off of bottom of the dress and set that fabric aside for the bust ruffle. Since there was going to be a lot of skin showing up top, I opted to make the hem a modest knee length.

3 – Taking the reserved bottom of the dress I just cut off, I turned a narrow hem at the widest end (the bottom) and ran gathering stitches around the top (narrower than the bottom). With the wrong side of the ruffle facing the right side of the dress, I then eased the gathers of the ruffle around the top of the dress and stitched it in place using a 5/8″ seam.

4 – I turned the raw edges of the top of the dress to the inside and stitched a 1/2″ wide elastic casing. I cut the elastic snugly and threaded it into the casing and stitched the casing shut. Also, stitching in the ditch is your best friend when it comes to elastic!

5 – I made long, narrow tubes of fabric for the halter straps and attached them to the front of the dress where I thought they looked best.

It’s as easy as that! I’m really happy with how this dress turned out – it could have been a disaster if I hadn’t come up with a solution to my poorly fitting maxi dress, and a waste of such nice fabric.

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Lucinda May 25, 2012

MMM 12 – May 25

Me-Made-Item: Dress, McCalls 4868 (OOP)
Link to Original Review: N/A, made before I started my blog

Cardigan: INC

Wearability Report:

I’ve gotten a lot of wear out of this dress in the past seven years. Yes, seven years ago, during my first summer out of college, I stitched up this halter dress and have worn it just about every summer since then. I think that speaks pretty highly to its wearability! I forgot all about this dress last summer (buried somewhere in a closet) and pulled it out to pack for my vacation this week. The only bummer about this dress is that since I made it so long ago (specifically after my freshman year…read between the lines on that one) I need to take in the sides quite a bit – it fits a lot looser around the top now. My cardigan covers up the fact that in the back, my strapless bra is showing and there’s gape-age around the sides. I’ll have to pick it apart when I get home (gulp!) and nip in the sides a bit so that it fits again and I can wear it all summer long.