Love this cult favourite!

This McCalls 7969 dress has become a bit of a cult favourite hasn’t it? Every one that I’ve seen has been amazing – I had to jump onto this particular bandwagon. It is especially good value for money because as well as getting an amazing dress pattern, I’m going to use this incredible sleeve to elevate a lot of other makes from now on!

The fabric I used for this is an incredible linen and viscose mix from Minerva. There is some hand sewing involved in this pattern, the bias binding around the sleeves and the neckline is supposed to be hand stitched down. I was initially looking for ways to avoid it by folding the bias and stitching in the ditch but I decided that might mess up the gathers at the sleeve cuffs so I did them by hand. To my surprise, I enjoyed it SO much! I generally avoid hand stitching out of laziness but I forgot how lovely and meditative it is. I will definitely plan to do more of this in the future!

I can see why this dress is so popular, it feels dramatic while also being comfortable and easy to wear!

Note on sizing:

I do think I might need to size down or do an SBA next time though as I had to cross the fronts over by quite a lot before the front even slightly covered my chest. Therefore, there is some pulling as it wasn’t drafted to be crossed over by that much! (I made the size M which is already sized down as my measurements put me into the L, but I might make the S next time)