McCall's M5097 (2006) Part I: Bobo dress

In fairness, this may not look anything like the pattern illustration by the time I'm done with it.  It's easy to find secondhand but I can find exactly no blogged examples of this online so apparently nobody ever sewed it.


Mixed feelings about this.  I kind of like it and kind of don't, just as I kind of like and kind of don't like pretty much everything that wants to be hippie-ish.  I went through an attempted-hippie phase in college and discovered that it's really not who I am.  Even more than I am not a hippie, I am not a glamorous bourgeois bohemian Gwyneth Paltrow Sundance-catalog hippie.

But I do like a comfortable dress.

So I'm making this, but I'm altering the heck out of it and making it out of one of my Goodwill bedsheets as a cozy at-home dress.  I rotated the French darts to the waist.

Step one:

Step two (I know this sounds ridiculous because, well, duh, but a part of me is mini-fascinated by how well pattern manipulation works.  You make a new cut to the bust apex, swing that part to the left, and the French dart just disappears.  It all lines up so nicely!  Which it should, of course, but somehow I never believe stuff will work the way everyone says it will):


Step three:


I think I'm just going to do a replacement waist dart but I haven't totally decided.  I could do a box pleat or gathers.  I'm really feeling a dart, though.

I'm using the cotton sheet that I overdyed this past weekend.  I like the color well enough but the dye came out a bit spotty.  It won't work for my older patterns but it's fine for a peasant dress.

 
I'm not doing any of the trim.  I'm not doing the drawstring waist since I'll wear it with a belt, anyway.  I might do a placket instead of the neck slit--neck slits and I never seem to get along.  I might have to do a longer front closure, anyway, since I'm using darts instead of the gathered waist.  Not sure if I'll do the tiered skirt or fudge my homemade semicircular skirt to fit.

Added later in the day:

New dart drawn in, sort of:


And "test-pinned" with paperclips:




I might wimp out and do a box pleat or something instead.  We'll see how motivated and precision-oriented I feel this weekend.

Comments

Denise said…
Hi! Did you ever finish 5097? I have the pattern (not yet started) and was wondering how it turned out...even with the alterations. Thanks!
No, I never did. The fabric totally did not work out. Too heavy.