Nicole

McCalls 6349....how I love thee...and how I hate thee.  I am 100% in love with this dress!  It has enough skirt so that I can play with my daughter without fear of flashing someone.  It is pretty darn girly and I think it looks really good on me.  It was really easy to put together and it doesn't take a lot of fabric.  It only takes two yards of fabric and a little over two yards of fabric for the lining/underlining.  I also love the fabric!  It is a nice lightweight blue floral-which, is my kryptonite, if you haven't noticed yet.

So, really, I should make a couple more of these.  But, man is this labor intensive (hence the hating of the pattern).  In all honesty, I will make this again.  But, when I sat down to make this dress, I was looking for an easy pattern and version C (the red/orange on the pattern cover) and the big circle that brazenly said "EASY!" swayed me towards this pattern.  However, this really shouldn't have been on my radar.  The bodice is heavily gathered and then it is underlined and then it is lined and the skirt is lined, which means that there are two hems to do.  I don't know if you know this, but hems are the bane of my existence.  Which, I shouldn't complain too much about the hem on this because my lining hem was serged and my shell fabric was kind of sort of hemmed by my mom.  What??  Doesn't every one drive three hours to visit their parents and then thrust a crumpled mess of fabric in their mom's face and ask that she hems it.  Then after she hems it, ask her to iron it.   In all fairness, I didn't ask her to iron it, my mom REALLY loves to iron.  Every time we come down, my mom asks me if I have anything for her to iron.  In high school she ironed my jeans and my t-shirts.  I am sure that she would even iron sheets if she wanted.

I think that when I make this next time, I will add a half inch or so to the bodice length.  I think I might also add an invisible zipper, but I am not sure how well the zipper will do with all those layers of fabric.

Now, if you have been reading all my posts, you may be surprised to see this review instead of Vogue 8663, well I am working on it.  I actually finished this dress a long time ago, but I had to wait for some nice weather to photograph it and then I got a gigantic stain on the back and I was all sad about it.  However, the other day when I went to pull this dress out (and toss it...I mean really, the stain was that bad) I looked it over and the stain seemed to mysteriously vanish.  Originally I thought it was blood or chocolate (I have a 4 year old, getting a large stain or blood and chocolate on something is completely possible), and I know that you can't wash those out.  But, maybe I sat in a puddle of disappearing ink...meh, anything is possible.

There was no way I wouldn't put a close up of all

 the gathering I did!

So, in conclusion, I love this dress, even if it is a little labor intensive.  It looks great with tights and a sweater, so I *should* be able to wear this year round. 

Cost:
Pattern: $1
Fabric: 2 yards of happy stop fabric ($5)
lining: more remnants from the knoppa sheet (free)
notions: $2 (zipper)
Total: $8