McCalls 7348 - A T-Shirt Dress Wearable Muslin

I've been passing women on the streets of NYC wearing easy t-shirt dresses and sneakers.  While it's not exactly Chicos Chic, it is a look that appeals to me because it's casual, comfortable and perfect for my office. So I want not one but a few. I have loads of fabric and just need to perfect a pattern.

So I pulled McCalls 7348 from the overflowing pattern pile and then I pulled a couple of pontes from the overflowing fabric pile ~ notice a pattern here ~ to make a couple versions of t-shirt dresses.

The pattern pieces are simple for this pattern. Just four pattern pieces - a front, a back, a sleeve and a neckband are all that is required to make a variety of dresses. Now I'd read a review where a slimmer sized sewist (say that 3x fast!) made the longest version and had to take ALOT of the excess fabric from the sides. But being the plus size honey that I am, I thought great I can use the extra ease and there will probably be less fitting issues - WRONG!

I started with an extra large and traced the pattern pieces off for the short dress, the high/low dress and the maxi dress. Then I took a piece of ponte fabric that I'd pretreated, which turned out badly, to use for my wearable muslin. This is a simple sew because it's a "Learn to Sew" pattern.

However, there is just toooooo much space in this pattern. Now I need you to realize that the pattern highlights that. It is something I knew going in. I just thought the extra ease would work for and not against me. To make the top shown above, I had to remove sooooooo much extra fabric from the sides (and there is still some there that bothers me) as well as re-angle the front to get the high/low effect.

Personally I think if you have another knit dress pattern like McCalls 6889, you should use that one instead of this one. There is just so much space and for a "Learn to Sew" pattern it could frustrate the h*ll out of a beginner. I hate when that happens to new sewists because they think it's them and not the pattern.

I am going to wear it as a tunic and not the dress I was hoping for so I didn't put a lot of sewing effort into it. There's no band at the neckline. It's turned under, pressed and topstitched with a double needle. There is also the high low effect where the high is too high for my chubby knees so it will only be worn with some kind of leggings. 

A few more pics of this one ~

Conclusion ~
At first I was going to let the pattern go and just wear the tunic I managed to sew from the pattern. I mean I don't have a lot of casual clothing and since I can actually wear it to work, it's a great I don't feel like getting dressed today outfit. Also, surprisingly my daughter really liked this outfit.

So I decided that since I'd already traced all of those dayum pieces, I wasn't going to let a simple pattern beat me. I made some changes to the knee-length dress pattern pieces to get a workable pattern. Future makes from the altered pattern are up next on the blog.

...as always more later!