Mille Fleur

I.love.this.dress.  Meet McCall's 7353, aka The Best Knit Dress ever.  I've been looking for a pattern like this for at least two years and not succeeding.  The Moneta was a rank disaster, the Coco looked like a pajama, the Southwest dress pattern didn't fit and I don't really know why, and the Zadie didn't ultimately work out (I wore my Zadies a lot last year, but they had issues, both in the construction and the wearing).

But this, my friends, is the unicorn of knit-dress patterns.  It has just the silhouette I was looking for, the construction is very straight forward and easy, and the fit is just what I wanted.  I was a little nervous to cut into this fabric, since I'd never made the pattern before, but I loved Masha's versions so much, I decided to just forge ahead.  I had bought this Mille Fleur fabric from Art Gallery last spring and saved it for a Zadie.  When I realized that the Zadie pattern didn't really work for me, I let the fabric sit, hoping something better would come along.

According to the packet on this pattern, I was between a 12-14 for the bodice and a 16-18 on the skirt.  Based on Masha's recommendation to size way down, I looked at the finished garment measurements (this pattern thankfully had them listed) and realized that I needed to make a straight size 6 (!!!) to get the fit I wanted. Even then, the finished measurements were at least a size and a half bigger than what I would normally wear.  I am not, nor have I ever been, anywhere near a size 6 in ready to wear, in any company, any sloper.  Nosir.  (This is one of my issues with patterns from the Big Four pattern companies.  The size you make is rarely the size listed on the packet, and it can be very very difficult to figure out what size to make if the pattern doesn't include finished measurements).

My other small beef with the Big Four pattern companies is that they pick terrible fabrics to make samples out of.  I never ever would have picked this pattern out of a book to make because the sample was just too ugly to see past.  The line drawings were pretty cute, but man.  That sample.  It doesn't fit the model at all, and it is just the ugliest fabric.  It's like they don't want to sell patterns or something.  Okay, end rant.  

There are a few wonky instructions--she wants you to finish the sleeve hems before seaming the sides of the bodice, and doesn't instruct you to trim the seam allowance on the underarm seam of the bodice before attaching it to the skirt, but overall, the construction is straightforward. The dress has lovely inseam pockets that are set into the waist seam (I love this type of inseam pocket construction because it keeps the pockets from flapping around all day long).  My only complaint about it is that it makes for a pretty bulky seam where the bodice, skirt, and pocket edges all comes together, and there aren't any instructions about the best way to reduce the bulk.  (And you can't trim the whole allowance because it forms the casing for the elastic).  I ended up kind of cutting away on the fly, but I'll do it differently next time.

My mods to the pattern (other than cutting a much smaller size) were to add 2.5" to the skirt at the bottom and to hem about 1/2" rather than the nearly 2" given.  I'm never quite sure why they give two lengthen/shorten lines when the skirt is mostly straight.  (The skirt for this is a very slight a-line).  I just added it to the bottom and thought it worked fine.  I also constructed the neck facing slightly differently than the instructions stated, but it all worked out in the end.  I really like the cowl neckline, but didn't want to fiddle with making one that was double, since this fabric is printed only on one side.

The only thing I might do differently is to slightly lower the waist line as it it currently sits right under my bust.  Larger busted ladies might need to fiddle with this a bit.  I didn't use the elastic guide included as I could tell it was going to be massively too short and instead just measured the unstretched elastic  around my rib cage with some seam allowance included.  I found out the hard way that using a stiff braided elastic was not the way to go with this dress.  I ended up pulling it out and using some soft fold-over elastic I had in the stash.  It made for a MUCH more comfortable dress.  The gathers around the waist line are a little softer with the different elastic, but I'll take that over the hard band around my ribs that the other elastic gave me.

I'm so pleased to finally have a knit dress pattern that I really love.  I have some striped knit fabric from Tilly's shop in my bin that I've been saving for the right pattern to come along; perhaps I'll make it up later this spring!

In other news, I finished my Calligraphy cardigan last night and am blocking it now.  It turned out so well!  I have to sew on the buttons once it is dry, but I'm looking forward to wearing it!  It is close in color to this dress, so I'm curious to see if they will look well together.  I'm planning to cast on another one today with the repurposed Jade wool.

I'm also trying to accept that I'm in a season in which I'm not going to get a lot of writing done.  I had sick kids home for six weeks solid, and now on and off for another week or so.  I'm ground down by it.  It is shaping up to be a tough sick season for our family (and we have had many hard years of illness, as long time blog readers will know).  

I'm still in pain every day, from the neuroma in my foot, and have come to the end of what internal medicine can do for it,  I'm pursuing physical therapy and additional chiropractic care for it, but I'm not hopeful about long-term relief.  My school pick-up routine just got a lot more hectic because the person who was picking up Ponchik every day left at the end of last month to pursue other work.  And there are the extra services of Lent.  I'm trying to dump everything in my daily routine that doesn't have to be there.

All these things take time as well as mental (and physical) energy, and take away from what I have left for the book.  I confess I've been a bit grumpy about it, as the book felt like something that was mine, something I was doing, that didn't have anything to do with being a mother, or a housekeeper, or a chief medical officer.  The upside is that I do have a great deal of the book written, and it will be there waiting for me when I have more time to spend on it.  Perhaps this time of latency will improve the story.  In the meantime, I'll have to be content with the small snatches of time I have for it.