As readers of my blog will be aware, I am addicted to 1950’s style dresses. I love the femininity of them, the swirl, that “princess” feeling. Luckily for me I have an hourglass figure which really suits the 1950’s A-line style.
When my son started school a few years ago, I enrolled on a weekly dressmaking course and over the years, I have made a few tops and some simple sundresses for myself. I particulary like the Vintage Vogue V8789. However, this time I decided to tackle a 1950’s style shirt dress pattern; the McCall’s M6696.
Interestingly, this all came about as a result of receiving the new Boden Spring 2016 catalogue. They have a lovely Sophia shirtdress in pale lemon but unfortunately had run out of my size with little hope of a restock. I looked at the dress and thought how hard can it be? So I googled simple shirtdress pattern and came up with the McCall’s M6696. This stated that it was an “Easy”pattern to tackle. All the better!
I looked to see if there were any general reviews of the pattern, then I looked at one of my newly discovered sites, The Curvy Sewing Collective. For the unitiated, this is a website designed to give advice on sewing patterns for the curvy person. Although I am a size 8, I generally have a large chest which doesn’t always equate to size 8 clothes! This website looks at sewing patterns and reviews and comments on them, giving helpful hints on how you can alter the pattern etc. Anyways, they had the McCall’s dress in it and gave it a good review.
Next, I went to my favourite fabric store – Barrys, in Birmingham – to have a look for some fabric. My husband and son are regular visitors here and the staff love my son and he loves hiding in amongt the fabric! My husband has a good eye for material so he picked out a fabulous retro bicycle print in a pale green which would look amazing in a dress. Great, I’ve now got my pattern and my fabric.
As I mentioned I went to dressmaking lessons but my tutor was always on hand for the more trickier stuff. When I looked through the McCall’s pattern, although it stated easy, there was some stuff I had never tackled before, such as yokes, button down bands and collars. Yikes! The instructions would have been clear if I knew what I was doing in the first place!
Thank heavens for YouTube! I googled “how to attach a yoke” and found a brilliant channel called Professor Pincushion. This American lady has hundreds of different clips on all elements of dressmaking which are so clear, precise and easy to follow. I have looked online for sewing stuff before but with mixed results. However Professor Pincushion is now my new find!
With her help, I made a yoke, learnt abou how to attach a collar and made a shirt button band. I cannot recommend her enough if you are puzzled about instructons on a sewing pattern. I completed the dress fairly quickly and really enjoyed doing it. After previous bad experiences of cutting into patterns and fabric and finding the fit is not right, I now trace the pattern and do a mock up with some cheap fabric rather than spoiling the original! I was glad I did because the size 8 was a little too tight on the waistband (too many cakes?) so I altered it to a size 10 when cutting out my fabric properly.
I finally finished the shirt dress a few days later I have to say I am really pleased with the results. The fit is good and the dress hangs well. The good thing is that I can now go ahead and make a 100 of these if I wish as I have the perfect pattern for my body.
So, if you fancy having a go at a new summer dress then take a look at McCall’s M669 and let me know how you get on!
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