The Dress That Did Not Want To Be Made: Part 1

Fresh from the success of my Jamie dress, I immediately embarked upon another project, McCalls 5882:

I bought the pattern a while ago and had the fabric neatly folded in my fabric bin. I planned to make something akin to the dress in the bottom left-hand corner, so I had bought three contrasting black and white patterned fabrics. I was anxious to make something fun and summery, and to test out my newfound invisible zipper installation skills.

I had even made a test top some time ago to make sure I had the right size. Which I sort of had, but I hadn't taken the entire dress sizing into account.



In case it is not clear from the photo, the dress is a tent. That fitted dress in the pattern photo did not translate. Another thing that did not translate was the fabric coordination. Somehow the fabric worked better together when it was just folded up. So, two strikes against it: tent and fabric pairing.

So, bye bye black and white floral dress skirt.



Whew, that was a lot of seams to rip. (Double rips, too, since I had initially sewn the skirt on the wrong sides of the back. But we won't dwell on that.)

You may notice, even from the inside, there there is now a waistband on the dress top. Yes, I decided to go in a completely different direction with the dress and we are going rogue from the initial McCalls pattern. I added the waistband from the Jamie dress, since it fit so well. The problem was that the McCalls bodice was too large to fit the waistband.


Enter the lowly, beautiful bust dart. Those side darts were written into the original bodice. I added the bottom darts, measured to fit the Jamie Dress waistband perfectly.

Now, what to do about the skirt. As always, during the initial fabric purchase I bought more fabric than the pattern called for (I always round way up for some reason), which meant that I probably had enough for another skirt, this time one that would match the bodice.



I shortened the skirt just a little bit, went down a few sizes (which I should have done to start off with) and I managed to have just enough to make a short, flirty skirt to add to my newly reconstructed bodice.

But this dress had some other ideas. More on that later.