Strapless floral dress – McCall’s M5849 (out of print)
I made this dress over a year ago but stuffed it in the back of the closet for a reason I’ll tell you later. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like the dress itself.
The pattern is an out of print Hilary Duff (go figure) McCall’s pattern which I really enjoyed. It was the first time I ever attempted a garment that used boning and I liked working with something new. The pattern itself was easy to assemble. It’s a simple pattern.
I also liked the gathered waist. With this lightweight cotton all the gathers give the skirt a lot of “poof.” It’s a good skirt for twirling.
I wore this dress to my friend’s birthday party last night mainly because I knew it would be dark. See, the reason why I haven’t worn it much was because the color in the fabric bleeds. I don’t know why it does this. I bought the fabric at JoAnn, washed it and I can’t remember if it was after the first wash or after the next one but the red in the flowers bleeds into the white leaving pink blotches all over the dress. I couldn’t have washed it with something else because after this dress I made a blouse and washed that on its own and wound up with the same exact problem.
It doesn’t seem that obvious in this picture but when there are splotches like this all over the dress, well, it just looks sloppy. The pink is also more apparent in real life. Is there any sort of way to pinpoint bleach to whiten out the pink spots? Like a bleach pen or something?
That is too bad about the bleeding because that fabric is beautiful 🙁
It is so cute! I have a few outfits like this that have some type of problem that I just wear at night. It’s a good trick.
Cute dress! Sorry about the splotches. I ran across your blog from BurdaStyle. I’m so glad I found it… a local Austin-ite!
grace, yeah, it’s not as noticeable at night time. and you probably wouldn’t notice the blotches unless I pointed one out but then you’ll immediately start seeing them all over the place. I’ll just keep my mouth shut and hope no one sees the marks!
angela, nice to see another austinite out there! I’m starting to find more and more. i need to keep a bookmark list of all of us. thanks for stopping by!
you could always try some diluted bleach & some q-tips. CLorox used to make a pen, but I haven’t seen it lately. Have you tried a vinegar rinse to set the colours otherwise?
Hmm, haven’t thought of the vinegar rinse. I wanted to try the q-tips with bleach but I don’t have any q-tips. I need to buy some of those. Thanks for the tips (no pun intended)!
I love this pattern but can’t seem to find it anywhere! I found your website on Google images. Any chances you want to sell the pattern if you still have it? LOL – Amy (www.thatssewamy.com)