I can't seem to stop making shirtdresses! This time I went for McCall's M6696. It seems that everyone has made this one already! And I think I know why this pattern is so popular.
To be honest I made this dress back in November so I can't even remember the size I made! Since then I started a sewing journal where I note the size, the sort of fabric used, all changes made and potential future changes. It will make blogging easier, especially when I have a bit of backlog to deal with. The dress came together nicely, having an option for a D-cup meant no FBA needed which is always a good thing! Although if I ever make this dress again I'd add extra 1 or 2 cm as the dress gapes. After wearing it for the photos I stitched the button bands together so that solves the problem.
The dress is not perfect. While most of my dresses are sleeveless I did want this one to have short ones. Unfortunately the sleeves didn't work out, as I could barely move my arms. I wasn't in the mood of trying to figure them out so I ended up having yet another sleeveless dress. The other thing I don't necessary like is the back, or rather the fullness in the back. That's probably the reason I haven't really worn this dress much. But I think it deserves to be out more often and it could work as a casual Friday dress ;) While sewing the collar I followed the pattern, which meant stitching the collar and collar stand together and then attaching it to the dress. And I hated this method! The collar stand edge is not sharp and it looks messy. In the future I'll stick to my usual - stitching both collar stands to the dress and then stitching the collar in.
The dress was made with black, denim looking tencel. It was a dream to sew with! To make my life harder I decided to do some decorative top-stitching. Last year a family friend gifted me a huge bag full of zips and random spools of threads, including some viscose in several neon shades. Black was a nice background for fluorescent yellow and I'm glad I went through that extra effort! It made it a bit annoying to constantly switching the thread in my sewing machine but it was worth the trouble. Anyway, it's time to take this dress out of my closet because it's not fair to spend all that time sewing it up and not wearing it!
