The last gasp of winter

It’s April, and it’s cold. Like where I live is right in the middle of the purple part there. Which is crappy but actually not nearly as scary as the warming up at the polar region on this map, but anyway.

I was supposed to be working on a cute little sundress for a Mother’s Day project for work. Pretend it’s spring even if it doesn’t actually feel like it? But.

My basement got cleared out last week, finally, to make the repairs from our flood in February. I had left careful instructions for the sewing stuff that needed to come upstairs as opposed to going out in the storage cube. And everything did, except the one bag that contained the (prewashed) fabric and pattern for the project.

Head, meet desk.

So instead, I pulled out a random fabric box that I could reach from the front of the storage cube (which is totally accessible, just very densely packed and I am not going to mess with that), and started rifling through the extremely limited selection of patterns I could get my hands on. (Because they happened to be on the kitchen table not in the basement where they belong)

And all of a sudden, apparently, McCall’s M7467 is at the top of my list, one final sweater dress for the season. In red velvet, because that was the best option in the box that I could reach. It’s actually good because I’ve been wanting to make this one for a while and it kept getting bumped down the list. And, well, who doesn’t love red velvet?

I made a size 10 grading to a size 12 in the waist/hips. The main alteration was to petite the hell out of it through the armscye. I was a bit alarmed at how much I shortened (at this point I feel like I know roughly what “my” armscye looks like in a knit pattern—but I also don’t trust myself.) but it actually worked out pretty perfect.

I initially did the big scrunchy collar, which looks great on the cover photo. In practice, it was a disaster. I could kind of pull it down into place, but as soon as I moved my arms it would pop up into a wad around my neck. It might be my velvet, which isn’t the stretchiest stuff ever. But ruching requires a certain amount of tension to look good, so I feel like it might need to be tacked down even in a stretchier fabric. I guess I could’ve read the instructions to find out if that was addressed. Anyway. Not working in my fabric. So I wound up just serging clear elastic to the edge and turning and stitching. We’ll see how I like that. It’s an uncommonly high, wide neckline for me that I’m not entirely sure about.

I cut view B, which in the drawing looks like a mini dress but is actually a tunic length, and not a long one. (Keeping in mind my petiting, but still). So when I got to try-on phase, I decided to add a big wide band at the bottom. I like the look anyway.

the sleeves might actually have been long enough! I still added about 4″ to the ends, which was a bit ridiculous, but then I added some stretched clear elastic to the seam to ruch them up and they’re perfect. I feel like they’re a bit wide, but they don’t look wide in the pictures so they’re probably good.

And that’s about the size of it. Except I still have that work project to do.