McCalls 5977 Sleeveless Dress Blouse

My father is one of those souls with an endless capacity to help others and is being recognized for his efforts. Of course his three girls and adoring wife will be there in attendance. And of course that means I need something new to wear. 🙂

With a tight deadline to get this done, my plan is to make a BWOF dress, but you know how that goes. Tracing those patterns takes time, so as a hold-over in case I can’t finish it, I made a new blouse. This is McCall’s 5977 and this one is a winner. I love the pattern mainly because it’s easy and gives a polished look. I will have to say it took longer than expected due to the excessive amount of hand-stitching and my own OCD-ness.

I used a nice silk from a local fabric store, Sarah’s. Problem though, I noticed that this was garment dyed as some of the color made its way onto my clear nail polish. Thank God they just opened a Zips dry cleaners ’round the way. I don’t mind coughing up $1.99 to clean it.

(Sideview)

Anywho, all and I do mean ALL of the bias binding requires hand-stitching to finish. I used their method of cutting a bias strip 2 3/4″ wide, folding in half right-sides together, attaching to the unfinished edge of the garment, folding over and handstitching in place. Next time I will use a single fold bias and attach via Roberta Carr’s method. That will allow for a cleaner finish when stitched together. I managed fine all the same.

(Interior finish to the armhole binding.)

I used french seams for all garment seams and I added a center back seam to 1.) tailor the blouse a bit more and 2) help address the back neck gap. I made a simple slash and overlap at the back neckline to decrease some of the circumference around the neck to handle that as well. Worked like a charm.

Ditched the big hem called for and added a narrow hem using the method from the Threads Industry secrets video. You stitch 5/8″ (I stitched 1/2″) for the unfinished edge. Iron hem to inside favoring stitching just to the inside. Sew directly on top of that stitch and trim very close to stitching. Fold over again, favoring stitching to the inside just barely again. Stitch directly over stitching again. Despite all of the stitching, only one seams shows to the outside. The instructor, Louise Cutting, is correct. The folding and stitching adds weight to the hem and makes it hang just that much better. It’s a minor detail, but it begins to show the difference in superior methods.

Another detour. The instructions call for you to sew the two flounces together then pleat. I did them separately to give more “poof.”

(Fullness added to flounce via separate pieces.)

It also calls for you to fold over and stitch the side of the flounce. That looked cheasy to me, so I stitched, folded over and hand-stitched in place to give a smooth finish to the edge.

(Side finish to flounce.)

Here’s a throw in pic of my label.

Wish me luck on the dress!

~ by sewhotmommi on January 6, 2010.