McCall's M6067 ~ Ladybug and Candy Trees

McCall's M6067 is a pattern from my stash.

Sizes go from 7-14.  The pattern shows one long dress and two short sundresses.  I'm testing the dress from View A (the green one) to decide if I want to make Miss K's 4th of July dress out of it.

Pattern calls for a 20" zipper, 1 yard of 1/2" elastic, and 1 7/8 yards of fabric 45" width for size 8.
I shortened to a 16" zipper (I mean how far does the zipper have to go down???).  I also had 2 yards of cotton tree fabric with ladybugs and candy as well as 1/2 yard of contrasting cotton fabric in pink. The tree fabric I purchased in January from Fabric.com for $14.37.  The pink was picked up randomly at Hancock's; I'll guess it was about $2.50.  I think I used 1 1/2 yards of the tree fabric and almost all the pink 1/2 yard fabric.

Miss K wears size 8 in RTW so I traced and cut a size 8 but a length of 10 because I didn't want it so short. A 7 year old needs to be modest!

The bodice and waistband contrast are lined with their same respective fabrics.  The skirt is not lined .

In step 3 after stitching armhole I clipped seams before underlining. Then after underlining I trimmed the seams.  This seamed to help because the clipping before hand reduced puckering and the underlining before trimming made it easy to catch all of the lining and seams into the underline.

Step 5 was weird to me - I'm just not used to sewing the sides in such a way but it worked and finished the sides so nice!

For the neck elastic, I cut it 1/2 inch shorter and used 3/8" elastic as that is all I had.

For the gathering of the bodice I used clear elastic instead of stitching gathering stitches.  The front gathers required 11.5 inches of clear elastic to match the waistband.  The sides of the bodice I did sew gathering thread because they were just reducing 1.5 inches to match the waistband.

dress front

I also serged both raw edges of the skirt center back before stitching them together to the large dot. This makes it easy and clean when I insert the zipper.  Also, as mentioned above I used a 16" zipper not 20' so I had to raise where I sewed to the large dot to the appropriate length so the 16" zipper was perfect fit.

serged center back edges

I used a really easy and fast way to do the bottom hem - blogged about it here. 

So proud that my zipper was darn near perfect!!

dress back

Miss K usually wears an 8 in McCall's patterns.  This dress bodice is a little weird because of the gathering.  I think it is a bit stiff and poofy - looks big on her.  I think if I didn't use a quilter's cotton it might have gathered/looked better? Possibly because of the double layer of cotton in the bodice it just doesn't gather right?  I'm not so sure. Also, the elastic in the neckline is not stitched down, just in the backs so the casing slides all over - thus messing up any gathers. I will continue to look for a dress pattern for 4th of July as this one just won't work.  But it's a cute dress nonetheless.

(a rare glimpse of my sewing room - no outside pictures because it is so blasted cold; I think summer has gone forever)

Breakdown
Tree fabric 1.5 yards: $10.78
Pink contrast: 0.5 yards $2.50
Thread: a few cents
Total: $13.28

~ Happy Sewing! ~ Kristin ~