Coming Up Roses

I made a new dress and I think I am in love!  

My new dress is McCall's 6886, a very popular pattern that has been around for a while now.  At the end of last summer I bought a lovely piece of textured medium weight knit in this gorgeous rose print from Backstreet Bargains.  I bought it with a plain knit dress in mind.  I love roses.  My garden is full of them and this fabric is very me.  I also liked the mid weight that I knew would hold its shape for a dress extremely well without the dreaded cling factor.

One thing I always do now, is get my tape measure out before I cut into any pattern.  I am pretty picky when it comes to fit for any pattern and anything to bodycon is quickly rejected.  A quick google search revealed that this dress had the potential to be just that and this is a look that I wanted to avoid at all costs.  I decided based on the ease in this dress that I needed to upsize from my usual 10 up top and 12 in the hips to 12 up top grading to 14 in the hips.  I am pleased I took the time to do this because the resulting dress is more shift dress than tee dress and I am really happy about that.

I chose to make view A with no real changes to the design.  The only thing I did change was to add two darts at the back to account for my sway back.  I used my usual woven shift dress pattern and laid it on my pattern pieces and used it as my guide.  I intend to use this pattern again so at some point I may redraw the back pattern piece with the darts added.

I love the resulting dress and it proved to be the perfect dress to pack for my Australian holiday for those, I really don't know whether I will need a nice dress occasions.  For an evening meal out I just needed to whip it out of the suitcase, no ironing required. It is also quick drying.  I had in mind that it would look equally good with a denim jacket and converse as a pair of dressy sandals.  Which all meant more room in my suitcase for fabric shopping!