McCall's 5974 revisited - Black + ivory polka dot dress

While taking stock of my wardrobe a few weeks ago, I realized I had only 3 dresses with long sleeves. One is my black funeral dress and one is a lace dress I bought for Les Miserables last year. The third is the first dress I made from this pattern, which I still love. (Check out those bangs - oi!) Since I like to wear dresses once or twice a week and enjoy variety, I decided to add to my meager long sleeved dress collection.

I used a border print ITY knit bought online several years ago. It has small dots along one selvage which slowly enlarge in size until they are colliding with each other along the other selvage. I cut the belt out of the very small dots so that it could be seen amongst the busy fabric. ITY knit is perfect for mild Texas winters in that it is very thin so I don't swelter but with long sleeves I still look season appropriate.

I cut this dress out on Friday afternoon, worked on it Friday night, finished it up on Saturday, and wore it to church today! Having made the pattern once before, it went together extremely quick. 

 This is a straight size 8. I am usually a 10 on top and a 12 on bottom, but like to go down a size for garments rendered in highly stretchy fabrics.

I did not care for how far the belt stretched along the side seams on the pattern envelope examples. It looks okay on the bigger busted woman, but kind of strange on the smaller one. I decided to fold out about 2" of the belt height on my pattern piece. I also cut 2.5" off the length of the skirt pattern before I cut out the fabric. No other alterations were necessary.

Special care was taken when cutting out this geometric patterned fabric. I wanted the front bodice necklines to match and not cross any lines of dots. I also wanted equal distance between the dots at the top of the back neckline and all the dots to match up size wise along the side seams and the sleeves. This is always a pain to do but pays off in the end.

I left off the interfacing the pattern calls for along the midriff band. I also omitted the back zipper. Here you can see the band without the belt tied around:

The neckline was finished with Wright's polyester bias tape. Click the tutorials label on the right of my blog for more information on this technique. All the seams were finished with my overlocking foot and the hems sewn with a twin needle.

I love the fit of this pattern and will most likely make it one more time, perhaps with short sleeves for summer.