Another McCall's 6612

Feeling inspired by the Sew Crafty Chemist and her recent finishes, I decided I needed to sew something. It needed to be a low-impact kind of project-- one that would not require lots of fitting or fussing. I was looking through my patterns and McCall's 6612 caught my eye. I had made View B previously and knew it was a good fit. So I decided to go with view C for a fun summer dress:

I cut a size 16 and didn't make any real fit adjustments, but I did veer from the instructions construction-wise. The fabric is an ITY knit bought a couple of years ago from Fabric.com.

The most challenging part of this dress was the neckline. I determined that I needed to do more than just turn and hem, because I felt certain it would just stretch and get all funky if left to its own devices. So, taking my cue from the last time I made the dress , I used a tip from PatternReview as my guide, "Using Clear Elastic to Stabilize Necklines," except this time I attempted to stabilize the entire neck and not just the back. (And now I just have to take a moment to celebrate the fact that I actually thought to look at my blog post on the dress to see what, if anything, I should adjust! Woo!) Anyway-- the whole clear elastic thing was challenging for me! It took probably ten times as long as it should have. I mean, it seems pretty straightforward, but the actual doing of it really just was not clicking for me. My fabric was not holding a press at all well, the elastic made turning the hem weird, and even with a ton of pins, I just couldn't keep everything in place.

As a result, my neckline is not beautifully finished (as you can see above). But it is done. And the ugly parts are on the inside where no one can see.

Other than the whole neckline extravaganza, the dress came together very quickly! To save a few steps, I attached the top of the sleeve to the body and then sewed one long seam from the bottom hem all the way to the sleeve hem instead of setting in the sleeve. I also used a 1/2" seam there instead of 5/8" just to give a little extra room. I did a lot of extra pinning throughout the process to help ensure the stripes aligned. The hemming was done with my coverstitch machine.

Overall, I am thrilled with my new comfortable, flattering and happy dress!