I bought a bare 3 metres of this fabric from Sewisfaction a little while ago intending to make the McCalls 6754

(as inspired by Sian of Kittenish Behaviour). I have made up the pattern twice now and have yet to get to grips with the best method for reducing the width of the sleeves. Prevarication and procrastination have been operating in force but yesterday, enough was enough – time to get to it and make the dress!

I found a picture on flicker showing the sleeve pattern with three narrow tucks to reduce the width so decided to try this method.

I laid out the fabric and pattern and was disappointed to see that the fabric was not as wide as I had hoped and there was no way that I could get the dress with long sleeves out of my 3 metres. In fact, even short sleeves would be pushing it.

For the previous iterations of this pattern I have extended the length of the skirt by 4 inches. Again, I could not do that this time, 1¾ inch extension was the absolute most that I could obtain across the folded width of the fabric. The finished length of the skirt was 22 inches which is the shortest I have ever had. Definitely the dress will have to be worn with opaque tights!

Construction went according to my revised order of work and was completed on the overlocker with the exception of top stitching the neckband and hems. Somehow with the changes that I had made to the sleeve pattern had also affected the shaping of the neckline, this is now almost a ‘sweetheart’ shape but in fact I quite like it.

Below is a photograph of the original pattern against the revised pattern. You can see the difference in width.

After constructing the dress I found that the sleeves were STILL too wide. I reduced their width by a total of two inches and graded back to the original stitching line by the time I reached the waistline of the bodice.

The hems on the sleeves and around the skirt were completed with a jersey twin needle and all seams were pressed on the wrong side with the steam iron.

McCalls 6754 in Cobra Corsage Scuba fabric

I am happy with the dress but wish it had been an easier make. I need to do more research on methods for reducing the width of the sleeves, or perhaps just find another raglan sleeve pattern to hack with this bodice and circle skirt.