As a Dress It Looked Like a Choir Robe

This McCall's pattern (5555) began as a dress but morphed into a top after I decided it looked like a choir robe on me. Gold nailheads placed in the neckband added some needed pizzazz.

Pattern Description: "Semi-fitted, above mid-knee dress has neck band, back zipper and sleeve variations"

Fabric Used: Navy cotton with lycra from Mood Fabrics in NYC; white cotton piqué for the neckband, also from Mood. This addition of lycra makes sewing with wovens more pleasant, because it gives you that ease you so often need (like in sleeve caps), and I love to wear anything with some stretch to it.

What I was going for with this pattern: First of all, I wanted to make an easy-to-wear dress for the hot summer months. My designer inspiration was the RTW by Milly. Being a Connecticut gal trained at FIT and apprenticed at Hermés, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, she has an East Coast preppy style that's more sophisticated than twee. I tried on some Milly dresses at Nordstrom, liked the way they fit and looked, and decided to attempt to make something similar. I thought this McCalls dress pattern (5555, View A) and the fabric I picked out would work.

Where things went wrong: So I made up the dress and voilà, it looked like a choir gown from the 1960s. Too much navy, too much bell sleeves—time to rework. The first thing I did was to take some off the sleeve length and then elasticize the sleeves about two inches from the sleeve hem. Better, but a little too young-looking for me. Then I tried adding white piqué bands to the sleeve hems and a white piqué band at the dress hem (shown in pattern illustration but never my intention). A little better, but this dress was still not doing it for me. The only comment my DD, who is my sewing sounding board and captive audience, would give me about this dress was "It looks fine." Translation: "That dress doesn't do a thing for you but you'll go all whiny-bananas if I say so."

Saving it from the wastebasket: I put the dress on my dress form and left it for about a week, just so I could step away from it and let any other ideas come to me. And I realized the only way I could make this dress work—for me—was to turn it into a top. I shortened the sleeves by about another inch, so they fall at the elbow, and I cut the dress off at the hip. Now it's something I'll wear, particularly with white pants. [I have it on at work today and the coworker compliment factor is high.]

Adding some pizzazz: As a top it's so much better for me, but it still needed something. Originally I had bought some narrow gold braid from Daytona Trimming, thinking I would use it to edge the white neckband. Too blah—it craved some dimension. If sew-on beads like Milly uses weren't so expensive I would have gone that route, but gold-domed nailheads from M&J Trims turned out to be the perfect solution at $4.98USD for a bag of 72.

Ordering online from M&J Trimming is the next best thing to shopping there. You get this handy rhinestone and button sizing card with every order. Here's what the packet of studs I ordered from them looks like.

Deciding where to place the nailheads took longer than attaching them.

Nailheads are easy to work with and unless you're going to be adding 100+ you don't need any special tools. Just press the nailhead's four prongs into the garment and the fold the prongs in from the wrong side with your fingers. These nailheads went through the cotton piqué and facing fabric (cotton) easily and I can't feel the folded prongs at all against my skin.

Were the instructions easy to follow? Yes, a beginner could easily tackle this pattern.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? If you look good in boxy shifts then this pattern will work for you; I personally need a little more definition with my dresses. (Plus I think I ultimately look better in separates anyway.) It's an easy pattern to assemble and I think this kind of neckband is flattering. I may make this pattern again in the future, but only as a top.



Note to new readers of this blog: Full disclosure—I usually enlist my DD to model the clothes I make, and that's her in the photo above. Cheating, I know….