McCalls 7948 Dress Sewing Pattern Review

I enjoy taking part in sewing challenges, so when Sarah, Suzy and Monika announced that this year's theme for #SewTogetherForSummer was sundresses, I decided that I needed to fit an appropriate pattern into my sewing plans. Having just bought McCalls 7948, that seemed to be an ideal candidate.

McCalls 7948, also known as #GraceMcCalls, features four dress options - each with a loose fitting bodice that has a back opening with thread loop and button, as well as various sleeve options and a sleeveless version. There are two different skirt options - either a pleated skirt with side pockets, or a gathered tiered skirt. I went for view C - the sleeveless bodice with gathered tiered skirt.

The instructions are fairly typical of commercial patterns. They're brief but clear if you have a bit of sewing experience, but might not be the most helpful if you're a complete beginner. 

The pattern is rated as Easy, which is probably fair as the looser style makes fitting a bit easier, and there aren't any darts or zips/buttonholes - the only fastening is the thread loop/button at the back neckline. 

One thing I would point out is to be careful when sewing the back facing - the seam allowances at the bottom of the slash are teeny tiny and after one wear my stitching in that area already needs a bit of repair.

I made a couple of changes to the pattern to suit my tastes. The most noticeable is probably that I added waist ties into the side seams. While boxy dresses are great in theory, I know that I like them a lot better in practice if the comfort of the loose style is combined with the option for a bit of added waist shaping. I used the waist tie pieces from the Asteria dress pattern, but in case it helps anyone else my finished ties are roughly 3.5 cm wide and each roughly 75 cm long.

My next alteration was to the armholes. There's no separate bodice/armhole cutting line for the sleeveless bodice - you just cut the same bodice as for the sleeved options and then bind the armholes rather than adding sleeves. In this case, I thought that doing that made the shoulders look too wide on me so I removed a wedge from the armscye. I ended up taking off about 3 cm at the shoulders and redrew the curve from there on both the front and back so it joined the original line at the underarm.

The third change I made was to the fabric cutting rather than the shape of the finished dress. The pattern has you cut the bottom tier of the gathered skirt in three pieces. I think this is possibly so it can be squeezed onto narrow fabric, but I had wide fabric with a large print that I didn't want to break up too much so I cut the bottom tier in two pieces. This means that I didn't end up with seams part way round the front of the dress. It's easy to do this - just measure the width of the skirt tier piece, multiply that by three and divide the result by two to get the width that you need.

When it comes to sizing, as with many commercial patterns, there's a lot of ease built into this pattern. Yes, this is meant to be a loose style but if you follow the recommended sizing it would end up VERY loose. I always pay more attention to the finished garment measurements (on the pattern paper), and based on those I made a straight size 14. That's one size down from what is recommended for my bust measurement and two sizes down from my waist/hip, and it's still plenty loose enough for my taste. 

I also lengthened the bodice by 1.5", which is very standard for me. 

While I really like the shape and style of this dress, the real star of the show is the fabric that I used. It's a cotton from Fabrics Galore (sadly it's no longer in stock) and I couldn't resist it when I saw it. It's a slightly odd fabric in some ways - there's a bit of stiffness and almost a waxy feel to it and I had to fight with it to get it to gather nicely (which made sewing those skirt tiers a little frustrating!), but you can forgive those things for a print this good I think. Even my dad commented that it was very jolly, and usually his standard comment about anything I make is 'it's alright'!

I really love how my M7948 dress turned out - all those colours and the volume in the skirt make it really fun to wear and I feel good in it, probably because I took the time to make changes to make it really "me". I'm glad that #SewTogetherForSummer pushed me to make it now, and I'm already thinking of ideas for using some of the other versions of the pattern. Have you sewn any of the views of this pattern?