Pineapple dress - M7543 review

I had started this blog originally to chronicle my process in making a Channel Style French Jacket but life got busy and while I finished the jacket (approx ~8 months of work!) I failed to keep up with the blog. C'est la vie.

I've since decided to keep it going adding my reviews of patterns and photos of my other makes! Starting with my recent 4th of July sewing binge of McCall's 7543 an off the should dress/shirt pattern.

Ready to go out for dinner!

I made a combination of views B, C and D! I used the B view sleeve with the ties (so cute!) made it the D dress length and used the cute shirt-tail hem and pockets from view C. I used a cute pineapple print chambray stretch fabric from fabric.com. This fabric has very minimal stretch, behaving as a woven not a knit.

Telio Denim Stretch Chambray Shirting Pineapple Print on Blue

Overall I think this was very easy pattern to sew and the directions were clear. I made this in two days but I was off of work, so one of those days was pretty full!

I made some alterations, first I cut a facing for the back of the ties using the original sleeve piece because when I saw the finishing directions were for a narrow hem I was unhappy with that. The back of the ties would sometimes show so it seemed like sloppy finishing to me. To do this I just cut another two of the sleeve/tie pieces but only the bottom portion so that my facing goes only about an inch up into the sleeve (I actually used the assembled sleeve pieces so my facing is one piece instead of two). I hand tacked the top of the facing to the seam allowances of the sleeve piece to help it stay in place at the top.

My next alteration was to make the view C hem line in a view D length. This was pretty straight forward as I just mirrored the shirt-tail curve at the lower length extending the straight middle part to match the width needed at longer length. I also had to extend the facing to make it longer.

If I made it again, I would make it maybe 2-3 inches longer because with the shirt-tail hem it's a little short on the sides but overall I'm really pleased with out it's turned out and I've already worn it 3 times!

Update:
I made a second version of this dress, using the view D hem & sleeve options in this fun fabric I purchased from JoAnn's. This one doesn't have pockets because this fabric was so slippery that they were giving me a lot of trouble and I threw in the towel as I was trying to finish it as I ran out the door to meet friends for lunch!

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