Made By A Fabricista: A Colorful Summer Dress For Travelling

I just got home from a road trip, will be leaving for another in two days, then back home again, then off for a long weekend for a wedding two states away. And that's just in one month's time. So of course I wanted an easy to pack wardrobe that resists wrinkling after I've smashed it in my little suitcase. I bought this gorgeous tropical print from Fabric Mart some weeks back. It's an ITY, a fabric I've often shied away from. They always seem to have a zillion options in stock. But ITY comes in a soo many awesome colors and prints, drape so well on my figure and sew up really easily for me between my serger and regular sewing machine. I'm a sucker for a teal and red combo print, it just pops!

I used McCall's 6713, View A for my pattern. It's a simple little a-line dress with a deep v-neck that's wildly flattering on pear shaped figure. If you notice on the pattern there is a flounce, I just excluded that because I didn't have quite enough yardage on hand for it. I really like that the bodice is fully lined, it allows the outer main fabric to not cling to the skin, but to drape lightly with all the shirring.

I cut a size 16 bodice and graded out to about an 18 at my full hip.  I added 1 1/4" length to the bodice and 1" to the length of the skirt.  This pattern seems to run a tad shorter than others hence the addition of that extra little 1/4" more on top. I usually just add 1" for me. The tissue just looked short, plus after reading reviews online, folks said they found it to run shorter as well.

After sewing it up, I tried it on and I needed a MAJOR swayback adjustment and needed to remove about 2" from the back waist... it as a baggy mess.  So I just went in and zipped off a fish-eye dart at the back waist- which lifted up the back skirt to an even hem. I then had to put in two vertical darts starting mid-back to the high hip... you can't even see them the print is so busy.

At the sewing machine and serger, this took me maybe three hours to sew up.  I can't find a fun knit dress that fits me this well and has an awesome loud print like this in any store in that amount of time.

ITY knit is a polyester material. I wore this for my photos today on a long hot, humid walk through the zoo, temps in the high 80s, low 90s in the sun. I didn't feel like I was more hot than if I wore a different sort of material... likely because the fit is pretty breezy. Now off to pack for the next road trip... again.

Happy Sewing & Travelling!!

~Kathy
Kathy Sews