M8051, 2 ways

  

   

Even though I am not much of a dress or skirt person, a simple pencil skirt pattern or sloper is an excellent thing to have on hand when inspiration hits. And it hit me twice with this cotton stretch sateen dress and denim skirt. Adding a bodice and then a center placket were both cinches.

I elected to use a commercial pattern to practice following other people's instructions. I probably didn't need to settle for something as easy as this pencil skirt from McCall's, style 8051 (a reprint of style 3830) but why not, I figured. I get tired of drawing and cutting tracing paper sometimes!

As beginner-friendly as this pattern is, I did run into the issue of ambiguous sizing. It only provides finished measurements at the skirt's hipline, and none for the waist. Those are the only two dimensions truly necessary for a fitted skirt, in my opinion! What the pattern assumes, I believe, is that you can cut according to your hip measurement and then pinch the excess fabric out, which means it also assumes there will be excess or it will fit perfectly. That's a bad assumption! What if your waist is bigger than what McCall's drafts for, do you let out the darts? Sew the side seams with a narrower seam allowance? You absolutely could, that's not a preposterous suggestion, but I want to pitch something even better: just list the damn measurements from the start! You're supposed to be doing the work for me, that's what I paid you for! Now, I don't know if it's me being a big stupid dumb-dumb and I'm missing some crucial sewist's insight, because I haven't seen any similar gripes on PatternReview, or Minerva, etc. I just might be an idiot, but I stand by my annoyance. Anyway, I ended up cutting a size 10 straight after I measured the waist by the pattern pieces manually found that it matched my actual waist. The body measurements chart says this should fit a 25" waist, but mine is 28" so that's a lot of intended ease. Later, I took in the side seams at the hips.

Midi length C, there is a back vent that I didn't photograph.

For the bodice on the dress I used my own sloper with the same neckline as my brocade jumpsuit. I remember tweaking that bodice so much, with its finnicky princess seams and slightly too-wide armholes, so imagine my colossal despair when I suddenly could not find it in my pattern files. I grabbed the jumpsuit and traced the seamlines as best as I could to replicate my own work. I was so frustrated at the thought of having accidentally thrown out the pattern that I didn't bother making a muslin of the new copy. Bad idea! I had to pinch out a significant amount of extra material where the princess seam meets the armhole. I think I'm going to intentionally throw out the pattern and start from scratch next time. And yes, I will make a muslin as advised.

Originally, I hadn't planned to line the dress because I was lazy and the cotton sateen seemed comfortable enough on my bare skin, but then I remembered that I need a place to stitch the bra cups. I ended up only self-lining the front bodice and using facings for the the back armholes and neckline. That actually worked out great as I didn't have enough fabric to line the whole bodice anyway.

Overlocked insides, back-neck and back-armhole facings.

Lined front bodice (feat bra cups) meets the back facings at the side seam.

It's not my best work. Those princess seams are rough in comparison to what I've managed before. There are some puckers around the bust apex and the seams should end higher on the armhole than where they do. None of these were issues with my jumpsuit. But, my patience was wearing thin and I just wanted to be finished so I kept moving forward with the imperfections.

Check it out, pockets! M8051 doesn't have them in its original design. I was worried that it would make my dress too casual (not helped by how casually I styled the dress like a pinafore, hah) but you can't see them very well anyway. Bless black fabric for obscuring all the potentially unsightly design choices from unobservant eyes.

This guy's got pockets too! Patch pockets with double layers! The flap opens up to a lined pocket, and you can also put things behind the lining for easy access. It's like having four pockets for the price of two! I knew I wanted this modification because I copied the pockets from a RTW skirt that I loved but never wore because the pockets flaps were a hassle to open up.

The button placket was easy, I just had to add enough width to the center front to fold over and sew down, like I normally would with a button-up shirt. What's nice is that because the two fronts overlap, you can slightly overshoot how much extra width you need and then cinch it back in later by placing the buttons further from the center.

M8051 is neat in that it's drafted with a facing, which I used as a kind of faux waistband by sewing it inside-out. It takes some finesse to line things up and you will get weird wrinkles along the curviest portions, but can't be that sloppy if I've seen that look even in RTW waistbands. The downside it that you'll have to cut your facing-waistband into pieces instead of one continuous one, if that matters at all.

I shouldn't be gushing over 5/8" seam allowances, as that's pretty standard for commercial patterns, but I can't help but appreciate what wide seam allowances let you to do. Namely, flat-felling raw edges, which I was actually excited to get to do for all the internal seams. It's just so satisfying, especially in bottom-weight fabrics like denim. It almost made me regret my decision to overlock all the raw edges for the sateen dress, as it's one of the lesser luxe looking finishes, but I was already kind of tired of making it. Flat-felled seams are not going to magically make me love any project if I wasn't feeling it to begin with. But that's alright. I'm glad to finally be done and I'm happier with the dress, and the skirt, in my possession than without.