McCall’s 8036: Front Button Wrap Dress

Welllll. My feelings for this dress have been all over the place. While making the dress, I was absolutely loving it. But when I finished it and actually wore it, I felt a lot more ambiguous about it-kind of liking it but also feeling self conscious. And then when I flipped through my pictures of the dress, any liking slid out the window and was replaced with Hate with a capital H!

I knew approaching the topic (by writing a blog post, say) in that mindset was a very bad idea, so I set it aside for a couple weeks before looking through the pictures one more time. And I’m glad to say that the Hate has come down to a simmer of mild dislike, but the upside is that I think it is fixable!

The pattern-McCall’s 8036 (Sasha McCall’s)-is a front wrap dress with a button option, two sleeve lengths and optional ruffles. The views are, of course, similar: they share the wrap feature and the shoulder darts to accommodate bust, but they have substantial enough differences that I feel like I could have a dress in every view and absolutely no one would notice it’s from the same pattern. And I like and would make every view. These are all rare things to come by these days!

For fabric, I used something I’ve had in my stash for 5 years that is a super-hand-me-down. I got the fabric from my mom who had gotten it from her parents. And I don’t know where my grandparents got it from, but I do know that the fabric was on a bolt and the bolt had a $1/yd tag on it. Any way you cut it, everyone got a pretty good deal here. The bolt had about 3 yards on it and I used pretty much all of it. Nothing but scraps left!

To me, the fabric looks like a linen. But I second guessed myself because who sells linen for only one dollar per yard? However, it would only press to my iron’s highest setting which is cotton/linen, so I’m assuming my initial guess was accurate. It is some type of linen and maybe possibly a blend with another natural fiber? I compared it to some of my Brussels washer linen and it did feel pretty much the same.

The problems I had with the dress started with sizing, no doubt. I am right on the cusp of the Big Four sizing (they have {6, 8, 10, 12, and 14} in one envelope and {14, 16, 18, 20, 22} in a different envelope. My bust and hips fall in the size 14 while my waist is size 16. My default has been to buy the lower size range but maybe I need to revisit that particular choice. It’s possible to size things down but pretty darn hard to size things up, ask me how I know. So I used the size 14 pattern but added extra to the seam allowance for some wiggle room. I was grateful to have it and feel like it was needed.

However, when choosing how much to cinch in the waist, I worry I erred on the side of comfort more than I should have. Tightening it a smidge more would still have given me movable ease but also would have made the silhouette a bit crisper.

The other area that needs some attention is the whole shoulder, bust, sleeve conundrum. When adding to the seam allowance for more wiggle room, I added the same amount to the entire length of the side seam and that was unnecessary. I only needed it in the waist area. Up toward the bust, I should have left things alone. There’s way too much space in the bust/armpit region that needs addressing.

I also think it’s official: I don’t like these sleeves at all. I took an inch off the length and I could take off more but that wouldn’t help with the real issue which is the volume. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good puffy sleeve but I think the dress would look so much more polished if the sleeve had a lower profile.

Imagine, if you can, a more fitted sleeve about half the length of the present one. Wouldn’t that look so much better? It might make the bust pleat look out of place, in which case I think an eased in (it may perhaps go as far as “ruffled”) seam might make everything more cohesive.

In any case, I think these are things I can work with! The dress isn’t a lost cause!

Getting the dress sewn was interesting enough to keep me on my toes, but thankfully I didn’t cross anything too exceptionally tricky. The hardest part was for sure those sleeves, they have an impressive number of pleats squeezed in! The shoulders also feature pleats and then the back waist has darts for fit, all of which require at least an adventurous or advanced beginner badge, in my opinion, even though the pattern envelope rates the pattern as “easy.”

And I made a mistake I’ve been scared of making for ages: I seam ripped through a buttonhole! Thankfully, it was the bottom one so I just sewed some zigzag stitches to fix it. It’s not very noticeable but it might be time to finally buy that awl!

For buttons, I chose to use these chambray buttons I bought a few years ago. I bought two packs, one of warm colors (pictured above) and one of cool colors. I’ve been, for lack of a better word, nervous about using them. I’ve worried they’d be too flashy or that they’d make a garment seem kind of folksy. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those aesthetics, it’s just that they aren’t something I typically lean to in my clothing so probably wouldn’t end up wearing much. Here, though, I figured if I couldn’t use the buttons on something as neutral as sky blue, I’d probably never use them.

They are a teeny bit loud for me, but I do absolutely love how they look on the dress! I love the subtle extra color included in an otherwise very neutrally-colored dress. And, again, with some revised sleeves, I think the entire look of the dress could be very polished and sleek, rainbow buttons and all.

So anyway, that’s the dress! It’s not a total wasted effort, though I don’t think I’ll be wearing the dress again until I make the changes that I mentioned. I also stopped short of doing some finishing touches (like adding a tie or button to keep the inside part of the wrap in place), so I need to keep working on the dress. But I think once I get around to those things, I’ll end up with a dress that I enjoy wearing. I absolutely loved the pattern-it’s a unique design that can be taken many different ways. So I plan to eventually fix this dress, but I also hope that I can make the other versions of the pattern as well. Maybe a mild stretch woven would help out with the fit issues, after addressing the sleeve volume. But I love a good wrap dress and this one is pretty versatile.

Pattern: McCall’s 8036
Size: 14
Alterations: added extra seam allowance to side seams. Shortened sleeves 1 inch
Fabric: an unknown hand-me-down, likely linen or linen blend
Cost: pattern $2; buttons $10; thread and fabric from stash
Would I make the pattern again?: I would! I like the pattern a lot!