McCall’s 8179 hack

Oh liquid silvery goodness 😍

You guys, there is a lot to talk about so I am going to jump right into it!

My inspiration for this look came from the thrifted fabric itself. I am not sure what type of fabric this is, my guess is a woven metallic lamé (let me know your thoughts!). It is lightweight, extremely reflective and has a crisp drape, so I knew right away that I needed to incorporate some sort of folds, flounce or layers into the dress to accentuate these properties of the fabric.

I debated between multiple patterns until McCall’s released their pre-spring collection right before I was starting to lost my mind😅… I saw the potential in M8179, view A, to achieve the look I had in my mind:

So off to sketching I went.

I decided to eliminate the shoulder strap and the back flounce since I only had about 1.5 meters of the fabric. I also envisioned the flounce to be more dramatic than the pattern so I added more gathers.

Once I was 100% happy with the look, I dived in head first to make the toiles…not one or two…multiples!

The first toile was to get the fit right and I cannot emphasize the importance of making a toile when it comes to this pattern. I had to adjust the pattern so drastically the first time and every time you need to make an adjustment to make the fit right, you have to distribute the amount you are taking in from all the seams (princess seams + side seams). In other words, in a regular dress, you only have the side seams and darts (if any) but in a 7 panel dress you need to be mindful to maintain the same distance between the panels. Hope all this makes sense? Now factor in a curvey figure and you can imagine the level of frustration I went through😅

Here was the first toile where I got the fit on the right track. If you will be making the pattern as is, this will give you an idea of how the flounce would look.

Now that I got the fit right, I moved on to drafting the flounce design to add more gathers and make it dramatic! I elongated the pattern 1.5 times to be able to gather at the seam but the first trial turned out to be a bit too dramatic (Left image below) in a way that it would not quite flow with the design of the dress. So I eased the gathers and the ‘relaxed’ flounce (right image) looked so much more in harmony with the rest of the dress. I mean my face below clearly shows my feelings 😆

I further developed the design by making the top wider and the bottom narrower. I love how you can improve during the sewing process as you go. Below is the final pattern that I self-drafted for the flounce. Of course you would need to adjust the width and length accordingly, but I used a 5″ width (that was wider and narrower at the top and bottom, respectively).

For the final dress, I used two layers of the flounce, and I added lightweight woven interfacing to create a more crisp drape at the top and bottom curves.

Some notes/tips for those using this pattern:

• Making a toile is a must. Especially if you have a curvey figure.
• I added the invisible zipper to the side seam instead of centre back because of my blessed curvey figure. I didn’t want any bulkiness or foldings on the arch of my waist.
• I lined the dress using a lightweight organic cotton fabric. However, looking back, I would avoid lining the dress and use a facing instead for two reasons:
  1. If the lining’s seams don’t match with those of the fabric then the lining’ seams could show on the fashion fabric and it just isn’t cute… So if you want to use a lining, I would opt for a very smooth lining and ensure the seam allowance is not bulky in any way.
  2. I added boning to the front and back (princess) seams as opposed to the side seams that was instructed by the pattern. However, I sewed the zipper on the side seam so that wasn’t an option for me. Since the fit was snug, the boning made the front and back torso too bulky (you could see where they were) so I removed them. Thankfully I don’t have much issues with the dress staying up right because my bust to waist ratio is high enough to keep it up but you can always insert the boning to the side seams and have the zipper sewn on the centre back. Unless you are also a curvey gal in which case you would understand the dilemma.

Overall, I am so happy with how this dress turned out. It was truly a fulfilling experience for me to bring this design from a sketch to reality. It was a lot of work to get the fit right but the multi-panel look makes all the efforts worth is!

I so appreciate all your messages and words of encouragement during the process. Hope you love it as much as I do.

Until the next glam look💘

With love xoxo

Ava