Sunday, May 20, 2012

New Outfit for PR Weekend: McCall's 6556 Fashion Star

Pattern Review Weekend was LOADS of fun and I did go purple locked. It was absolutely fantastic to see some sewists I've met before like Elizabeth, Cindy and Andrea. And it was great to meet so many new-to-me sewists! More on this later in the week.

For now, I thought you'd like to know what I made to wear for shopping in the Garment district on Friday: McCall's 6556 Fashion Star Dress: 



This dress was ridiculously easy to sew up. It's just two (large) pattern pieces - a front piece and a back piece.  And there is just one seam that requires any fitting whatsoever. 




The pleats look like they could be potentially complicated, but they weren't at all. So, this pattern delivers big style with little fuss.


I made just a few changes (improvements, I think) like I used my serger for the side seams and I made binding for the neck and armhole. I think it's just a neater, cleaner look than just turning under and stitching.



My very not-by-the-book method was to cut some 2 inch strips of left over fabric, fold it in half lenghtwise (wrong sides together) and then serge the raw edges together. Then I cut the allowance off of the neck and armhole and lined up the serged edge with the raw edge. I stitched a 1/2 inch seam, flipped the binding up and pressed (seam allowance toward the dress). Finally, I topstitched with a twin needle.




The full review is here.

Oh and here is the whopping three yards of fabric that I bought.

2 yards of knit burnout from MetroTextiles (photo on a white background so you can see it)
 
One yard-ish (one panel) of cotton from Mood
The cotton with the tulips is really sturdy and destined to become a pencil skirt. Now, here's the thing about working near the Garment District. Earlier on Friday I had decided not to buy $40/yd black guipure lace (Milly) because that is a heck of a lot for me to spend if there is no project in mind and I don't know exactly what kind of yardage I'll need. But now, I'm thinking that if I made this into a pencil skirt, it would need a black lace top to go with it. Right??