McCall's 8084 dress - Dressed by Ava

McCall’s 8084 style was definitely out of my comfort zone since I gravitate more towards fitted dresses but there was something about it that I knew right away I needed this in my me-made wardrobe and I am SO glad I went for it 😍

Pattern & Fabric:

The pattern is a semi-fitted dress with tie front bodice and dolman sleeves. You can either add a ruffle (view A) or elastic cuff (view b). The waist has an elastic, which gives this dress a nice shape and you can make it in various length, with an option to create a ruffle for the hemline. I made view A and was debating to add a ruffle to the hemline as well but ended up keeping the skirt simple.

Fabric is a rayon poplin bold floral in navy from fabrications. I have gotten so many compliments on this fabric and I must say that this fabric choice is another one of my proud moments. I think you can’t beat a bright floral design with this pattern.

Mods:

I pretty much butchered the front bodice pattern! lol at some point I should have started on a new pattern sheet but why waste when you can just add the leftover bits and pieces of pattern paper to get the final design you want? Anyways, what I did was to cut an inch from the seam as you can see on the left in order to reduce the amount of ease on the bodice. I also shortened the bodice by 1″ on the line where it indicated to shorten or lengthen the pattern. Because of that, I figured I was losing some of the opening space below the tie (which is a lovely design feature I didn’t want to miss on), so I brought up the tie by ~ an inch. It might be confusing to figure out how I did it by just looking at the tie but it was a lot of free hand movements with the help of the curve ruler to mimic the original shape of the tie, but at a higher position. You can just cut the original tie and tape it up higher and then blend in the curves. Looking back it was a smart choice to do this as the collar/knot ended up just deep enough for my liking.

Another thing I am so excited to talk about is with regards to the ‘intentional pattern placement on the fabric’ (I totally made up that term but I am sure something like that exists :D). So as the term implies, I mindfully placed the pieces on the fabric, and coordinated the fabric design based on my liking. Specifically, I placed the left bodice on a section of the fabric that had two flowers (because why not?), and then I wanted the right bodice to be less crowded so I opted for more of a solid on it. When it came to the flounces, I chose the flowery section of the fabric for the right flounce to go in harmony with the flowers of the left bodice and a less busier/more solid for the left flounce to match that of the right bodice. Did I made any sense or did I totally lose you with right and left? I hope that you got the general idea but there are so many ways you can intentionally place your pattern pieces on the fabric, and trust me, it makes a huge difference once your garment is complete. The only caveat is that you do end up wasting more fabric, but I think in the end it’s totally worth it, and you can always make use of the scrap fabrics.

Final modification to point out was shortening of the dress by ~3 inches, but that always happens with almost every dress 🙂 I am barely 5′ 2″, and am very picky on the exact length of my skirt.

Conclusion: obsessed and obsessed. I cannot recommend this pattern enough. It was super easy to make as the instructions were very clear (I was actually impressed how I didn’t get stuck even once), and you get a pull-on dress, easy to wear either by dressing up or down. I will definitely be making another one, this time adding a skirt flounce and doing the elastic cuff sleeve version, in a solid fabric colour.

Below are some more photos. Thanks so much for reading my post. Until next time.

xxx