Princess Seams Dress

When I first bought this pattern McCall’s M5890 I was very excited about it! If you make all pieces from this one envelope you have a complete wardrobe that would be fantastic for travel!!!

This is the story of how I became so frustrated with commercial patterns and the desire to sew was zapped out of me for about a month! So according to my measurements I would be size 16.  When I tried the dress as is it was absolutely huge! I was using the right fabric, right size, right needle, right thread, ……(you get the picture)

Turns out I had to re-baste this savage beast 3  times!!!! Arrghhh! I think this made the armscye all wonky because when I went to turn the raw edges under and make a baby hem the tips of the shoulders had a weird shape.  I calmly unpicked that  I threw it in the corner and lost ambition on fixing yet another problem!

So I picked this back up recently and unpicked the sleeve hem and cut off the wonky parts.  I re-hemmed them using my dissolving thread.  Turns out I liked the armscye and sewed them with permanent thread.

On some scraps I tried tweaking my serger to get a rolled hem just right. Turns out Sally Serger was being difficult. The edges were not laying flat and looked horrible. View exhibit A below. Scandalous I know!

So I resorted to cheating and used strips of dissolvable stabilizer but hey…..check out exhibit B below.

A word on rolled hems.  My lower looper thread keeps breaking when I fool with the tension too much. It doesn’t seem to be rolling under so I tried to tighten it and  SNAP!  I did buy some below quality thread that was on sale when I first bought a serger so that might be it. Anyone else have a hard time with this looper? I may get a good brand name thread for that problematic looper and see if that makes a difference.

Here is the finished product. I love the print on this knit and it has a beautiful soft hand to this fabric.