Three Easy Knit Travel Dresses

I've mentioned before that I love knit dresses for the summer and especially for travelling - they are comfortable, pack up really small and light and don't crease plus it is easy to wear them very casually for sightseeing and dress them up a bit for evening.

This is mostly old news if you follow my instagram account (@allisoncsewing), but last month I went to Puglia, Italy and as usual decided at the last minute that new dresses were needed.  I turned to 3 of my favourites that I have made many times before.  I actually only managed to get two of them done in time, but the final one is finished now and will still get plenty of outings before summer is over.

Burda Style 05/2010 - 105
I have lost count of the number of times I have made this dress (& now I think about it I packed 4 of them on this trip!).  I usually widen the skirt and wear a slip underneath to reduce the lumps and bumps a bit, but honestly I prefer the narrower skirt silhouette if you have the confidence for it.

This version is very casual, in a soft pink & black stripe cotton knit.  It doesn't drape as well as some of the ITY knit versions I've made in the past, but for casual daywear it is ideal.

McCall's 6319 (out of print)

I've only ever made View A and I've never bothered putting on the zipper at the shoulder, perhaps I will branch out on a future version!

This one is in a classic black & white striped knit, I like the effect the asymmetric pleats make with the stripes.

McCall's 6069 (out of print)

Last but not least is McCall's 6069, View A which is the one I just finished last week.  Despite making this dress a few times before I have yet to make it in anything close to the 1 hour boldly claimed on the pattern!  Originally I wanted a sort of relaxed maxi sundress feel so I widened and lengthened the skirt.  However, when I tried it on it looked too much like a formal gown with it's dramatic front and back cowl drape.  This is good to know if I ever need a packable, quick to make fancy dress, but it wasn't what I was looking for this time so I hacked the skirt down to midi length.

McCall's 6069 Jersey maxi dress

I feel bad for posting a summery maxi dress with bomb cyclones and storm Eleanor wreaking havoc elsewhere, but the reality is this dress won't see the light of day until at least May by which time I will have forgotten all about it.  Stay safe and warm out there.

I spent the holidays in Phuket, Thailand to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday with his large family who came out from the UK.  Of course I wanted to make something new to wear, but also something easy and not too dressy.  I used McCall's 6069, an easy knit pattern I've made several times before.  The pattern envelope calls this a 1 hour dress, but I don't think I'd ever be able to make anything that quickly.  Maybe 3 in total?

I made the sleeveless cowl version, but changed the skirt to maxi length and left a slit in one side seam.  The ITY jersey fabric is from China and has all my favourite colours in it so I'm glad to have used it for this special occasion.

I added a strap across the back (as shown for view C, the square front neck version) otherwise there is a tendency for it to fall off the shoulder with the deep cowl in the back.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of me before the party and I have only just noticed now that the back strap needs to be a bit shorter!  Oh well!

Unfortunately this pattern has been out of print now for a while, but if you like easy knit dresses I'd recommend it if you can find it somewhere, I've got good use out of it over the years and am sure I'll use it again.  I'm wondering now why I haven't yet made the long sleeve version....

McCall's 7381 Dress

Thank you for the lovely comments on my formal dress and also on my wedding anniversary.   Now back to more regular stuff!  The weather here in Hong Kong is finally starting to cool down enough to think about long sleeve dresses so I tried out a recent pattern purchase.

McCall's 7381 is a pretty versatile dress pattern, having 2 bodice, 3 sleeve and 2 skirt variations.  I actually made a version that isn't shown, view C knotted bodice with the shorter skirt and long sleeves.

https://mccallpattern.mccall.com/m7381

I cut a size M and folded a bit out of the circumference of the hem sleeve only so that I could fit it onto my 2 yards of fabric.  I also found that I could fit it on over my head quite easily so I left off the snap fastenings on the front bodice overlap and just edge stitched it closed.

If I made the long sleeve version again I'd be tempted to put the sleeve band on before sewing the sleeve seam.  It's not as neat a finish, but the sleeve opening is quite small and would not fit onto the free arm of my sewing machine so it was a bit fiddly to do in the round.

The bodice is lined and the front facings are interfaced so the pleats on the outside stay in place nicely.

The fabric is a poly print featuring colourful parrots - the nature print obsession continues! - admittedly this one is a bit more twee than I'd usually pick, but I think the black background helps make it look a bit more grown up!

I really like the finished dress on the dress form, but I am less keen on it on me although I am hoping I can fix it as I'd definitely like to make it again.  It looks alright in the photos, but I feel uncomfortable and am constantly fiddling with it.  The problems I have are :

• I find the skirt to be quite short even though I took the tiniest hem allowance that I could.  I planned to wear this with tights and boots, but even so I feel a bit exposed.

• It's slightly empire line and I think I'd prefer it with a longer bodice so that the waist of the dress hits closer to mine.

• The fabric in the skirt, which is unlined unlike the bodice, is quite static-y and floaty.

I can make these changes for next time, but to try and save this one I'm thinking of adding a border at the hem in some heavy black crepe I have to both lengthen and weigh down the skirt a bit.  I'm also thinking about whether I can add a skirt lining to the waist seam without having to unpick anything.   

I figure I have nothing to lose, but please do let me know what you think or if you have any other ideas.

McCall's 7387 Shirt

I have always found shirts quite tricky to make to a standard that I am happy with.  However they are something that is hard for me to get to fit right in RTW and I do like wearing them.  I also think that with practice I will definitely get better - they are not technically that difficult to sew, they just require precision and some internet research on better techniques than is usually found in pattern instructions.

Anyway, I think this is a great looking pattern from McCall's, I like all the variations so I'm thinking that if I work through all of them, making changes and improvements along the way I will learn something....

McCall's 7387 Shirts / Shirtdresses

I decided to start with view A and was determined to make it in a lovely soft horse print cotton.  I underestimated quite how much of a fabric hog that back piece is with the large pleat so I had to leave off the sleeve bands, but I think the print would have looked strange there as the scale of it isn't really suited to narrow bands.

I had quite a few problems along the way and this  is definitely a project I needed to step back from when I had finished so that I could stop focusing on the things I didn't like about it and look at it as a whole.  That said, of course I'm going to dredge up all the problems I had with it here since this is a learning process, but I will not be pointing out any of this stuff when I wear it!

The fabric itself, well the print anyway,  gave me a few problems;

• Should I try and match it?  I decided not to, I don't think I'd have had enough fabric and just considering how to match the separate front band gave me a headache.  I would have preferred not to have horses bottoms down my front band so that could definitely have been planned better!

• The blue horses show through to the wrong side of the fabric so I really should have used a plain white fabric for the yoke facing.  I learnt this by the time I got to the collar.

Ghost horses on my back yoke

• When I put my collar on I realised that I hadn't cut it symmetrically and those horses were taunting me so off it came.  I didn't have enough fabric to redo the collar the way I wanted so I changed to to a collar stand, with a seam in the centre back.

Really annoying collar pattern placement

Then there is the pattern which has some good and bad points;

• I made a size Medium, it fits perfectly, no adjustments whatsoever.  I would have to add some width to the longer versions, but that is easy.

• As I mentioned above, I really like all the variations shown in this pattern.

• I think the instructions should show the burrito method for the back yoke.  I'm annoyed that I thought about this afterwards!  There are lots of tutorials for this on the internet (one example from ClosetCasePatterns) and as long as you cut and sew accurately it is a much cleaner and quicker finish.

• The hidden placket seems unnecessarily complicated.  I read a few reviews where the reviewer had changed the front bands to a regular shirt front with visible buttons because they couldn't follow the instructions and I thought "I've made closures like this before, how hard can it be?".  Well quite hard it turns out!  I am certain that in the past I have used a much simpler method with extended fronts that you fold to create the band (like this from Threads).  Here the bands are constructed with lots of separate pieces and then sewn on.  There is nothing wrong with the instructions, although the diagrams are quite small, you just need to be very clear which pieces are front band, facing band and fly.  Of course this is a perfectly valid, and probably the traditional, method, but then they go and have you just stick a collar on with no collar stand.  I don't know, I sound really grumpy writing this out, but I just think make your mind up, is this a formal shirt or isn't it?!

After all that moaning and putting the shirt into time out for a bit I have come to appreciate it though I'm going to give myself a bit of breathing space before tackling another version!

Palm Print Jersey Dress

This is a dress made from two different knit patterns, I've shown exactly which ones below, but really you can consider mixing up any of your favourite patterns.  Since this one has an elasticated waist casing and it's in a knit fabric there isn't any special drafting to do as the bodice and skirt can easily be made to fit together.

I used two patterns I have made before, the top is from BurdaStyle 08/2011 - 126 which I've made several times as a top with a peplum band and a raised neckline.  I also eliminate that centre back seam.  You can see a couple of versions here.

08/2011 - 126 Link to pdf dress pattern

The skirt is from McCall's 6744 although I changed the length to midi.  I'm finally coming around to appreciate this length now, maybe in a few more years I'll be wearing flounce sleeves and jumpsuits!

McCall's 6744 (out of print)


I used a green and black palm print ITY jersey - this didn't even get to live in my stash, I just knew what I wanted to do with it and bought and sewed it within a week.  Often I can get a bit paralysed by procrastination so this felt good!

The elastic casing at the waist is around 1 inch wide as I had that sized elastic to hand.  I also had enough fabric left over to make a self fabric belt so I have an option of wearing it both ways.

Part of the reason I made this up so fast was so that I would have it to wear on a short trip to Singapore which is where the photo below is from.  I always seem to decide at the last minute that I need something new for any trip, but at least I've learned to make something quick and easy!