M6465 Dress in silk and chiffon (McCalls)

This M6465 chiffon and silk pongee dress is a commissioned project for my mother for which I only tapped into my stockpile resources. Yeah o/

If the fabrics are complicated to sew, the pattern is quite simple… a good balance of difficulty.

The M6465 dress pattern

The envelope pattern

The M6465 dress is a pullover dresses loose-fitting dress (no closure system), with French darts, a round scoop neckline with or without sleeves, and NO pockets. Tssss.

The dress features 5 pattern pieces for the sleeveless versions: front, back, front and back facings and armhole facings.

The pocket contains all sizes from 8 to 24 in the same envelope with 4 versions of the dress.

When the sewing (and other handicrafts) video course platform Blueprint closed, I rushed to use all my “lifetime” course credits.

Like many subscribers, I chose several courses that included a paper pattern. This one is from a class to learn how to sew a “shift” dress.

Let’s be honest and throw modesty to the wind: I don’t need a video course to sew this kind of piece.

However, the pattern seemed to be of very good quality and I thought I would use it one day.

It was a winning bet when my mom asked me for a shift dress to face the heat of summer 2021.

What do you mean “What heat?“. 

Yes, I know.

Fabrics

For the fabric, I shopped my stock before buying and I did well:

• the chiffon was given to me by my mother to sew her something (that’s done!),
• the silk pongee is a big remnant from my Teddy HB
• and the pattern was waiting for its opportunity to jump out of the pattern library…

The only negative point is that the silk pongee and the chiffon were not the coupons that took the most space in the stock!

Sewing the M6465 dress

Other than the difficulty related to the shiftiness of the chiffon and silk lining, I didn’t encounter any major difficulties.

The dress is cut in size 14 and it falls very well even if I could have lowered the darts by 1 or 2 cm.

Here, I followed some tips from the Artesane video “Techniques et finitions haute couture 1“ to work my fabrics from hell.

Since one version of the pattern is asymmetrical, I used it to trace complete pattern pieces (not to be cut on fold) and used the curve of the dress bottom from one of the other versions and shortening it by 10 cm.

My mother is not very tall.

With complete pattern pieces, I laid the fabric flat and parallel to the edge of my table and pinned like crazy. 

Then I cut both with scissors on the big straight lines and with a rotative cutter on the curves. And it was pretty decent.

The lining was also cut 10 cm shorter than the muslin.

Since the dress is fully lined, I didn’t use any facing.

I used the video tutorial below to assemble the lining and muslin with no visible seams on top using the burrito technique (yes, still the same one!).

It went on by itself with such thin and soft fabrics.

Since my mother shares (or has passed on to me) my obsession with pockets, I of course added pockets to the seam.

I might as well say that she was delighted with this detail.

The neckline of the lining is supported by a grainline ribbon and under-stitched to make sure you don’t have the lining coming in uninvited to peek out.

The lining hem is finished with a nice clean rolled hem on the serger. The easy way out, I must admit.

But I’m pretty proud to say that I made a 4mm handkerchief hem on the chiffon that holds up.

To finish off the chiffon scraps, I also sewed her a long belt/stole that allows her to cinch the dress in at the waist if she wants… But oops! We forgot to take the pictures!

Conclusion 

I am very happy with myself on this dress. And so is the recipient, which is the main thing!

I must have improved my technique since these fabrics from hell didn’t give me too much trouble by taking things calmly and with the right methods.

Maybe I’ll be able to get some precious ones out of my stash without the risk of ruining them? Now I just need to find the patterns.