Sunday, July 22, 2012

Polka Dot Ombré Dress Overload (McCall's 6070)

McCall's 6070 polka dot dress

True dress love: black & white polka dots of all sizes in a quick and easy surplice-bodice knit dress.

So do you ever pick up a pattern, grab some fabric from your stash, and just get cutting and sewing—without any detailed planning, sketching, agonizing, muslining, pattern matching or bust-adjustmenting?

Because I like, NEVER do that. Except, with this dress I did—and it totally worked.

Inspiration: When Lee offered up a copy of McCall's 6070 at a recent Brooklyn BurdaStyle Sewing Club get-together, a giant lightbulb of happiness materialized over my head... because with its wide gathered shoulders, surplice neckline and midriff band it was almost a dead ringer for my favorite RTW dress, the "Marisa" dress by Karina, shown here in December:

Mommy & Z

Now, Karina dresses are AWESOME: they're stretchy, comfy, sexy, well-made available in a wide variety of awesome styles and patterns—AND best of all, made by seamstresses sewing for a living wage in Brooklyn! So they're definitely well worth the $160 price tag... BUT I couldn't pass up the chance to make my own version with some stash fabric I had on hand.

The pattern: Easy McCall's 6070 (now out-of-print).

Pattern Description: Simple knit dress with gathers at shoulders and under the bust, surplice front and back bodice, back ties, midriff waistband and gathered dirndl-style skirt.

Pattern Sizing: You know, the usual. Since I was using a stretchy poly knit, I made the back bodice in a size 10... and tried to cheat my way out of a full bust adjustment by cutting the front bodice as a size 14 (except for the shoulders—I cut those in a 10).

This mostly worked, except the front wrap edges are gapping like no-body's business despite my best clear elastic application efforts—because I need extra length over the girls, but not over the breastbone.

I didn't use the midriff pattern or the skirt pattern—I just cut some 4" wide rectangles for the midriff, and drafted a half-circle skirt using Patty the Snug Bug's handy calculator.

IMG_0585

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? Sure-ish.

Were the instructions easy to follow? Easy enough. But I didn't bother with putting elastic in the waistband (due to the high recovery power of my knit) or hemming the bottom edge.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? It's such a flattering style—it really emphasizes the waist (and bust?)!

Fabric: 2 yards of very soft mystery polyester ombré-effect jersey from the stash, purchased at Sew-Fisticated Discount Fabrics in Boston for $3/yard.

B&W polka dot ombre matte jersey

The really awesome thing about this fabric was the ombré pattern—tiny dots in the middle growing to giant dots at the edge. I cut the skirt from the tiny dots bit, and the bodice from the bigger dots, and the waistband from some medium dots.

But as much as I would like to pat myself on the back for thrifty sewing from the stash... half-way through the making of this dress I did some serious reading and research about textiles and the global fashion industry and the environment and human rights and toxic waste and... well, more on that later, but I'm generally pretty bummed out about cheap polyester (and conventional cotton, and... a lot of other stuff... sigh... I'm even wearing organic lipstick made out of hemp and beeswax in this photo).

IMG_0590

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made: See sizing notes above. The main thing was I drafted my own half-circle skirt, as I was worried the gathered skirt would add too much bulk to the waist area.

Construction notes: I should have done most of this on my serger, but it's currently a bit hard to get to... so I did it all with a zigzag stitch with mixed results. Especially since I sewed it in a series of late evenings a few weeks ago while not quite awake, and had to repeatedly pick out miles of zig-zagged mistakes.

The worst bit is the narrow-hemming on the front and back bodice crossovers—it's just a total ripply mess, despite the clear elastic I stuck in there. Luckily the dots are a major visual distraction. I MAY unpick the waist seam and tighten up the front crossover edges... especially since the gapping/rippling got a lot worse after pulling the overlaps aside to nurse the toddler.

IMG_0572

Successes:

  • A quick, lovely, versatile knit dress that fits me just perfectly.
  • And it's NOT a costume!
  • Playing with patterns without tons of planning.
  • I want to wear it all the time.
  • BLACK AND WHITE POLKA DOTS.
Room for improvement?:

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? I definitely highly recommend, though it may be a while before I sew another myself. BUT I most definitely plan to use the half-circle skirt pattern by itself again soon—maybe in a seriously crunchy organic hemp version or something.

Wear for: Work, date with husband, parties and twirling toddlers around in circles:

McCall's 6070 polka dot dress

Oh... and I have a lot of various ideas and projects cooking that I'll be sharing soon, some of which you may have heard about elsewhere. But for now, I just had to share that I sewed something that wasn't a costume.

So: do you ever seek out fabrics with environmental considerations in mind? (I never have before—but that's about to change!)

32 comments:

  1. I love this! And it's made me realise I can wear a (recently made) large white on black polka dot top with a (made a few years ago) small white on black polka dot skirt.

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    1. Absolutely! Pattern mixing is totally the way to go—big dots with little dots, bold stripes with subtle stripes, etc.

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  2. This is too lovely for words. Don't beat yourself up about the material, it's better to use what already exists then to have thrown it out, that would be insanely wasteful. You can buy better stuff in the future, but if you have unnatural fibers in your stash you ought to use them.And this is lovely.

    strugglesewsastraightseam.wordpress.com

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    1. Oh, definitely. It's in the stash. I just mean for NEW fabric purchases (or maybe better yet, thrifted fabric purchases). And I'm actually not saying I'm planning to eschew all not-ideal fabric choices, only that I will try to make a bit more of an informed choice... kinda like I do when I buy fruits and vegetables (because I really can't always afford organic).

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  3. Gorgeous dress. Super flattering on your figure. I haven't clicked on your link yet but I'd love to read what you read about polyester manufacturing, even if it will horrify me. I try to do my research about where my food comes from so I should with the textiles I consume as well.

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    1. Thanks Andrea! I think the food/fabric comparison is a good one—we may not eat our clothes (usually, anyway) but it's probably a good idea to know a bit more about their backstory!

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  4. Wahou, this dress is really great on you ! I've seen some dresses made from this pattern but I think that the dress is the better with an half skirt than with a gathered one!

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  5. Super cute dress! It looks great on you and I like the touches of red as accents.

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  6. Gorgeous, love the polka dots and black and white. Lovely on you.

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  7. Beautiful! I love the polka dots & that silhouette is incredibly flattering on you.

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  8. It is AWESOME. Hopefully the gaping doesn't ruin it in the long run, because it is gorgeous! And the half-circle skirt is a total improvement. I love how you played with the polkadots, too.

    Hmm, I'm reminded of the upcoming Cake dress pattern... :D

    I know it's a bit irresponsible to say this, but when I get to a point where I am sure I can keep a roof over my kids' heads, then I will start worrying about my fabric sourcing. But I definitely applaud anyone who has the time/money/mental energy to pay attention to that stuff. >_<

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    1. Oh thank you! It's not even NEARLY as nice as the Cake pattern, and the resemblance is a weird coincidence—I didn't start working on the illustration for Tiramisu until this was already sewn up a few weeks ago.

      I don't think you're being irresponsible at all (and aren't you the queen of using thrifted fabrics—which is probably the most eco-sensitive choice anyway)? And individual home sewists are hardly the main contributors to the environmental impact of the textile industry—that would be the fast fashion industry and big retail/clothing giants like H&M, etc.

      And it's not like it's even easy to make an informed choice, because the information is deliberately hidden from us by manufacturers... I mean, you read a fabric label and it just says "100% cotton" or "100% polyester"—they aren't required to note whether they used formaldehyde or toxic dyes or heavy metals in the production, etc.

      Anyway, like I said above, I'm just going to make some attempts to learn and think about it more, but I'm hardly going to beat myself up when my energy would be better directed elsewhere.

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  9. That dress is perfection on you!

    Responsible fabric sourcing is a tough one. This might be rationalizing, but I'm hoping that the positive environmental impact of sewing balances out the negative ones associated with using synthetic fibers.

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    1. Jane, you might be right there--when we sew, we aren't supporting the environmentally-damaging mass fashion industry, and we can make clothes that are better quality and last longer and aren't so fast to end up in the trash or donation bins. We can also repair and customize our clothes!

      I'm actually NOT against using synthetics on principle—polyester fabrics would be fine by me if they could be redeveloped to be easily recycled into new polyesters without releasing toxic gases in the process!

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  10. Oh oh! I'm jumping up and down in excitement for you because this dress is so fab! Even better than the inspiration dress. I love the polkadots and the fit is spot on.

    PS - I swear I will make the next Bklyn meet up!

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  11. Fantastic. You look wonderful in both dresses.

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  12. Ombre polka dots?!?! BE STILL MY HEART. I love how you've laid out the dots here - it's pretty fabulous - and it totally distracts from any of the issues you brought up. I like drafting skirts instead of gathering the fabric for a skirt - gathered knit skirts can end up really bad on me. This dress looks all kinds of comfy - you look like a toddler twirling rock star!

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  13. I LIKE it! I have the pattern, too!

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  14. I love it! I've got to get my hands on some fabric like that (preferably not polyester, though, of course).

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  15. Such very attractive dresses! You wear them with pizazz. I also adore the very cute artiste

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  16. Have you read the analyses of the environmental impact of polyester, linen, rayon, etc. over at 3hourspast? Wait, who am I kidding, you're doing the Cake patterns illustrations! I have similar concerns about the gifted polyesters in my stash, but I decided that I'll just use it rather than throwing it out, but I will avoid purchasing any more. And I tell myself that at least I'm keeping those poly-cotton sheets out of the landfill and not buying into the disposable fashion mindset...hopefully that offsets somewhat the impact of the chemicals used to make the fabric?

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    1. ha, yes, that's why I first started thinking about these issues. I do want to be clear that home sewers are more of the answer than the problem when it comes to the global fast fashion industry marching us all off the cliffs of environmental disaster... but still, whenever possible I do like to direct my hard-earned money towards more sustainable—or even environmentally positive! (eco-positive, I think is the term) options.

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  17. Such a cute dress. I have used this pattern too and the gapping happened to me too! AGH!

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  18. I love this dress, very clever on the placement of big and small dots

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  19. I had a very similar fabric from FabricMart. I LOVE what you've done with this! So cute!

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  20. I think different prints can work if it's in the same family; I don't think plaid and polka dots would necessarily work. This dress looks fabulous! I love the mix of prints together!

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  21. Love it! Great fit! I have this fabric and was wondering how best to use the ombre dots and I think this is just perfect!

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  22. I'm so pleased you got such a wonderful, flattering dress out of this pattern! Love the polka dots and the circle skirt change. Yay!

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  23. it looks fabulous on you! Great job!

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