M7969

I know. I know. I know! You done seen it, read it and heard all about it; but ‘cha AIN’T heard it from me, so come sip the tea! You KNOW you wanna [lol].

I finally up and made #m7969, a contender for the Holy Grail Pattern 2020 Awards. I done seen it on my feed more times than I could count, and whilst it always intrigued me, I just wasn’t sure it was ‘my style’ (whatever that means). Don’t get me wrong, the dress (or top hack) looked fabulous on so many other people, but I was hesitant about the loose fit.

Ya see, the loose fit trend has never really been my thing. I feel like I get swallowed up by all the fabric, and the garment ends up wearing me – instead of the other way around. Now this ain’t because I’m petite ‘cas I’m not (neither in height or width) but my figure simply requires some waist definition! IMHO

But then 2021 rolled around and I woke up one morning during lockdown feeling like I NEEDED this dress in my life and I already owned the perfect fabric for it… somewhere. I pulled out my cupboard, looked through my basket, checked my bags, but I just could not find it anywhere! Finally, I unearthed it in the back of my closet.

The fabric is a mottle floral rayon challis from fashionfabricsclub. I’ve had it in my stash for over a year so I’m not sure if they still have it in stock. It feels like butter y’all, nice and soft and sultry with the most amazing drape!!! It washed up well, but was, as expected, a little slippery. I starched the entire fabric whilst pressing it to try and stabilize it. I think that helped, but only a little.

You gotta be mindful when you’re working with rayon because it can grow just by looking at it the wrong way! Once I had cut out the bodice pieces, I stay stitched the neckline and the armcye. Stay stitching is a step I sometimes skip over when using stable fabrics [don’t judge me!!!], but when it comes to rayon, my advice:

DON’T YOU DARE!

Case in point: I cut the neckline binding out on a single layer, and moved it from my cutting table to my ironing board. By the time I had fused the interfacing, my binding had grown a good inch or so!!! No kidding. I had to trim it back down to the intended size post-interfacing. Imagine if this happens to your neckline!!!

I found the dress pretty easy to construct, but a little more time consuming thanks to the hand stitching. I know some people have machine stitched their bindings but I didn’t mind the hand stitching. I may or may not have been rewatching ‘Bridgerton’ for the 4th time whilst doing it!

I have a secret to tell: I did NOT toile this dress. So… who is this and where is Kris??? Truth be told, because this is a loose fit dress, and since I’m pretty familiar with McCall’s block, I went ahead and cut out my good-up fabric without checking the fit first! I think the dress fit pretty well but if I were to make it again I’d love to be able to size down from the LARGE to the MEDIUM…but I can’t. I bought a digital copy of this pattern, which has 2 alphanumeric size ranges. I bought the larger range, which starts at a size large. sigh. So, if I wanna make a medium, I’m gonna have to figure out how to grade the pattern down, or purchase the pattern AGAIN (not happening).

Once I finished the dress, I was in love with the way it looked on Kristina (my dress form) but when I tried it on, it fell flat. I kept tryna find my waistline!!! I thought I could add some elastic at the waist and went ahead and made a small casing (since I had already trimmed and serged my seam allowance). I wasn’t happy with how the casing looked at the V in front, and opted to add elastic only to the back waist. Whilst this had the benefit of defining my waist a bit, the elastic was drawing the side seams way into the back, which in turn was warping my CF. ugh. So I unpicked.every.stitch and removed the elastic and casing. That was NOT fun in this fabric but again, Bridgerton helped!!

At this point, I gave up on tampering any further with the waistline. I’d wear it as is, or belt it. SIMPLE

By the time picture day rolled around, I was all up in my feelings over this dress. IDK if its the hair and makeup that did it, but I felt like an island goddess swishing and twirling around in this dress! I wore it loose and then I tried it belted. Unsurprisingly, I preferred the latter, but could actually see myself rocking it loose as well.

Which is your favourite: floaty and fabulous or belted and snatched? Drop me a comment and lemme know!

I’m gonna go twirl about some more in this dress!!

Gotta luv ya and leave ya,

Until next time,

xoxo

Kris