McCalls 6612 -- Take One: The Molecule Dress

Someone referred to McCalls 6612 as just as easy as McCalls 6559, the tank dress I made three times last summer, so I bought this pattern with great hopes.  And decided to make it in great haste.

I already had a spandex-y knit in my stash.  It's dotted, but the dots are more along the lines of molecules, so I think of it as my version of a Mrs. Frizzell dress:) (Mrs. Frizzell, the science teacher on The Magic Schoolbus, always wears science-themed clothes).

I made view B, a long sleeve dress with a built-in draped neckline.  After holding the pattern up to me and eyeballing it, I traced and cut a straight 16.  I did not tissue-fit -- failure number one.
(Tissue-fitting means pinning the front and back pattern pieces together along the seamlines and trying it on.  If the center front and back aren't at your center front and back, you need to do some adjusting -- for example, either adding or subtracting along the side seams).  The failure to tissue fit was compounded by a failure to translate the words "close-fitting" on the pattern description to "tight."  Remember:  if the pattern says "close-fitting," that's a code word for "tight." If I had tissue-fitted the front and back pieces, I would have noticed that the narrowest part of the side seams hit me at the wrong place, and I could have added a little width there, or even better, raised the waist.

Consequently, when the dress was completed, it fit -- but just barely.  Now this was meant to be more of a comfortable dress, and I did not want to have to spend the whole time wearing it having to worry about breathing too much;)  However, I noticed that if I raised the skirt part up a little there was plenty of room across my middle.  I am very short-waisted, so even though I usually need to add length to the skirt portion, if I had shortened the bodice portion it would have been a better fit for me. (Note to self:  remember to check the waist).

Side view

So I attempted a salvage by cutting the dress off horizontally under the bust and resewing the skirt portion on at a wider place.  This took forever as I kept trying to fine-tune the fit but in reality I was merely making it harder on myself.

The horizontal seam where I tried to fix the fit is just visible at the bottom left

I'm not sure how I feel about this neckline.  Even though there is extra fabric in the bodice, there is still a modesty issue if you bend over too far.

In the end, I'm not crazy about this dress.  It's okay.  It's warm, and I did need some winter dresses, and I may wear it here and there, but the print is a bit much and the fitting issues kind of dampened my enthusiasm.

As for the pattern itself, it was very straightforward and I had no problems sewing it.  I will make it again for myself after adjusting the fit on the pattern pieces.  I do recommend it -- just check for fit BEFORE you make it.