Peacock Maxi Dress

Spring is in the air, and what better way to welcome it than another maxi dress? I swear I should be the poster-child for McCall’s maxi dress pattern – this is my third! However, I decided to shake things up a bit and Frankenpattern this one. I find the second maxi dress I made from fabric with 30% stretch restricts my long strides. It’s kind of like walking in a kimono, having to take shorter strides. Sometimes that feels cool but most of the time, not so much.

When I made my black maxi skirt for Europe, I liked how flowy it was and how easy those long strides were in it. I determined I should merge that pattern with my go-to maxi dress pattern and create an all-new, even better maxi dress! Meet Ms. Peacock:

She’s a hybrid of McCall’s 6559 and 6966. When I was laying my pattern pieces onto the fabric, I just lined the maxi skirt piece up with the hem of the dress pattern piece, and it blended pretty well. If you’re thinking of doing the same, beware – this eats up a lot of fabric!

The fabric is a soft, stretchy knit from GirlCharlee.com. Come to think of it, I should be their poster-child, too! I certainly order enough fabric from them. And can you blame me? They always have the cutest prints! Five yards of this beauty along with five yards of another knit were posted for uber-sale on Christmas Eve. They were on sale because they were flawed. This peacock fabric was “slightly flawed” and I think it’s because there was a faint hint of a different tinge of color on the fabric. I’m not sure if I captured that flawed bit in this dress, but I honestly couldn’t tell after I pre-washed it.

I used Freya (my serger) for the construction part – it was sooo much faster compared to using Odin’s lightning stitch on my other maxi dresses. Those seams are, like, four feet long! I did use the lightning stitch on this dress for attaching and top-stitching my self-made bias binding for the armholes and neckline, though. Now that I’m looking at it, I could have made those top-stitching seams a little narrower. Oh, well.

The great thing about the bottom part being wider and swoosh-ier is that I can take swooshy pictures:

I wore this on a quick trip up to Phoenix and back and it’s sooo comfortable for car rides. It’s also great for the upcoming summer hell we’re sure to experience in Arizona soon. This fabric is pretty lightweight and airy. Bummer is I have to make sure my undergarments have no prints or loud colors or else I would probably be getting a lot more attention than I want. :-\

COME TO MAMA!

Hmmm, the chickies don’t seem to like peacocks too much… or they just don’t seem to like me. *Sniffle* they grow up too fast!

Anyway, I have a few good-sized scrap chunks of this pretty peacock fabric left, so you’ll probably see another Sewaholic Renfrew pop up around here. Gotta love those basic wardrobe staples! They’re such nice, easy, instant-gratification projects. 🙂

How about you… are you tired of seeing basics (cake) in the sewing blogosphere? Would you rather see more glamorous (frosting) pieces? Or does a little bit of both do you some good?

-RED