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?

McCalls 7475 culottes sewing pattern review & a bonus Freya

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I generally think life is better in pretty dresses (or occasionally skirts) and I'm not going to entirely abandon that philosophy any time soon, but in the last couple of years since moving to a rather windy coastal town I have been forced to admit that trousers can be very useful too! The latest addition to that area of my wardrobe is today's project - culottes using the McCalls 7475 pattern.

McCalls 7475 is a pattern for semi-fitted skirts, shorts and culottes with a mock fly front, back yoke, two different front pocket styles, the option of back pockets and length variations. I got the pattern when it was included with issue 72 of Love Sewing magazine.

I basically made view F - the longer culottes, but I omitted the back pockets and used the front pockets from view E.

My measurements put me in an 18 for this pattern, but based on the finished garment measurements I was pretty sure that an 18 would be too big. I made a toile of a 16 and they did fit, but were just a little too fitted to be comfortable around the waist. I let out the side seams just a touch (literally just a couple of millimetres at each seam) and that was all it took to make sure I'll be able to wear the culottes happily.

The culottes are a fairly simple project to sew and I was surprised by how quickly they came together. The mock fly front is really easy (I've never actually sewn a proper fly front, but the way people talk about them, I assume they're more complicated than this was!) but still looks nice and neat. The instructions were what you'd expect from a commercial pattern - they're fairly succinct, but I found them completely clear and didn't have any problems.

Part of me was tempted to get a patterned fabric because I'm always naturally drawn to prints rather than solid colours, but in the end the sensible side of me won out and I decided to opt for some navy needlecord from Textile Express. It's a lovely fabric and while patterned culottes would have been fun, these will go with pretty much any top that I own so will get much more wear. The needlecord that I used has some slight stretch to it as well, which makes them super comfy, so I'm more likely to want to wear them!

I decided to give these culottes pretty insides and used some prized scraps of possibly my favourite ever fabric (it's a Liberty tana lawn - the print's called Suzy Elizabeth) as the waistband facing and to line the pockets. The pattern doesn't call for you to line the pockets and just has you turn the seam allowances under before stitching them down (they're patch pockets), but I prefer to line pockets if I've got some suitable fabric. In this case both the waistband and the pockets would have been a bit bulky if I'd faced/lined them with the needlecord, but the cotton lawn works nicely.

I'm wearing the culottes here with a Tilly & The Buttons Freya cowl neck top that I made recently. The fabric is a lovely jersey from Loubodu Fabrics - sadly it doesn't seem to be available any more though. I have a steadily growing collection of Freya tops, and find them really useful at this time of year so I'm going to be using them to take part in this year's One Week One Pattern challenge hosted by Sewisfaction. Is anyone else planning to join in?

Anyway, back to the culottes! I was fairly sure before making them that they'd be useful, but I'm actually quite surprised by just how much I like them. I've worn them quite a few times already, and I'm sure I'll be wearing them much more this autumn/winter. I'd still quite like a patterned pair though; I just need to find some suitable fabric - any suggestions?!

McCalls 7848 Coat Sewing Pattern Review

The project I have to share with you today has been finished for a few weeks already but, thanks to unseasonably warm temperatures in the middle of February meaning that I didn't need to wear a wool coat, it took a while to get photos of it. This is my version of McCalls 7848 - another project to cross of my Make Nine list!

McCalls 7848 is a pattern for a fitted lined coat with front zipper closure, side seam pockets and neckline, sleeve and length variations. I basically made view D (which is a collarless, maxi-length coat) but using the skirt length from view C (which is just fractionally below knee-length on me).

A collarless coat winter coat might seem like an odd choice in some ways, but I'm currently in the middle of a bit of an obsession with knitting shawls, and I thought that a collarless coat would be a good way to show them off. I'm wearing it in most of these photos with my Land of Sweets cowl, which I've just realised I've never blogged - I should probably do something about that!

As coats go, the construction of this one is fairly simple and the pattern doesn't call for any kind of tailoring. In terms of the sewing itself, if you're happy making a lined dress then there's nothing that should be particularly challenging as long as you're comfortable working with whatever fabrics you've chosen to use.

As with most commercial patterns, the instructions are fairly succinct but they are clear and there wasn't anything that I found confusing.

My outer fabric is a micro dot reversible wool and acrylic blend from Textile Express. It's a gorgeous colour and a lovely fabric, especially for the price, but I wonder whether this particular pattern might have benefitted from a fabric with slightly less body and more drape than this has. In particular, setting in the sleeves (something which I'm usually fine with) definitely wasn't easy and, despite my best efforts, the sleeve cap still isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be.

My lining is a navy teal viscose lining from Fabworks. You definitely couldn't accuse this fabric of not having enough drape! I don't think I could have picked two more different fabrics really - the wool blend stays where it's put and when I was sewing two layers together they stuck to each other almost like felt (which made it very easy to get all of the seams to match up nicely!), whereas the lining wanted to slip and slide all over the place. I managed to tame it enough to do a decent job of sewing it though!

In terms of sizing, I had the problem that my bust measurement is a 16 for this pattern, while my waist and hips are an 18 which is in the larger sized pattern. I went with my bust measurement and got the smaller size range, knowing that commercial patterns are often more generous in their sizing. I made a toile of the 16 and it fitted fairly well, but I thought it was a bit snug around the waist for a coat that I'd want to wear over cosy winter clothes. I simply reduced the seam allowance around the waist a touch and that gave me enough extra room for winter layers. I also made my standard adjustment of lengthening the bodice, although I had to lengthen it more than usual (4cm instead of 2.5cm). In case it helps to know for reference, my measurements are B 38", W 32" H 42", and I'm about 5'9".

I wasn't completely convinced about the coat when I'd first finished it. I think a large part of that was because the lining had dropped a fair bit when I left it to hang, and evening it up and hemming it was a little stressful so that had tarnished my feelings about it a bit!

Having worn it a few times though, my McCalls 7848 is definitely growing on me! That "bulky" feeling that I mentioned above is slowly fading and I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at the photos for this blog post - the coat looks better on camera than it does in my head! I love the colour, it's nice and cosy and is doing a good job of keeping out the gale force winds that we've been battered with recently. So overall, I think we can call it a success, don't you?