Three Easy Knit Travel Dresses

I've mentioned before that I love knit dresses for the summer and especially for travelling - they are comfortable, pack up really small and light and don't crease plus it is easy to wear them very casually for sightseeing and dress them up a bit for evening.

This is mostly old news if you follow my instagram account (@allisoncsewing), but last month I went to Puglia, Italy and as usual decided at the last minute that new dresses were needed.  I turned to 3 of my favourites that I have made many times before.  I actually only managed to get two of them done in time, but the final one is finished now and will still get plenty of outings before summer is over.

Burda Style 05/2010 - 105
I have lost count of the number of times I have made this dress (& now I think about it I packed 4 of them on this trip!).  I usually widen the skirt and wear a slip underneath to reduce the lumps and bumps a bit, but honestly I prefer the narrower skirt silhouette if you have the confidence for it.

This version is very casual, in a soft pink & black stripe cotton knit.  It doesn't drape as well as some of the ITY knit versions I've made in the past, but for casual daywear it is ideal.

McCall's 6319 (out of print)

I've only ever made View A and I've never bothered putting on the zipper at the shoulder, perhaps I will branch out on a future version!

This one is in a classic black & white striped knit, I like the effect the asymmetric pleats make with the stripes.

McCall's 6069 (out of print)

Last but not least is McCall's 6069, View A which is the one I just finished last week.  Despite making this dress a few times before I have yet to make it in anything close to the 1 hour boldly claimed on the pattern!  Originally I wanted a sort of relaxed maxi sundress feel so I widened and lengthened the skirt.  However, when I tried it on it looked too much like a formal gown with it's dramatic front and back cowl drape.  This is good to know if I ever need a packable, quick to make fancy dress, but it wasn't what I was looking for this time so I hacked the skirt down to midi length.

McCall's 6069 Jersey maxi dress

I feel bad for posting a summery maxi dress with bomb cyclones and storm Eleanor wreaking havoc elsewhere, but the reality is this dress won't see the light of day until at least May by which time I will have forgotten all about it.  Stay safe and warm out there.

I spent the holidays in Phuket, Thailand to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday with his large family who came out from the UK.  Of course I wanted to make something new to wear, but also something easy and not too dressy.  I used McCall's 6069, an easy knit pattern I've made several times before.  The pattern envelope calls this a 1 hour dress, but I don't think I'd ever be able to make anything that quickly.  Maybe 3 in total?

I made the sleeveless cowl version, but changed the skirt to maxi length and left a slit in one side seam.  The ITY jersey fabric is from China and has all my favourite colours in it so I'm glad to have used it for this special occasion.

I added a strap across the back (as shown for view C, the square front neck version) otherwise there is a tendency for it to fall off the shoulder with the deep cowl in the back.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of me before the party and I have only just noticed now that the back strap needs to be a bit shorter!  Oh well!

Unfortunately this pattern has been out of print now for a while, but if you like easy knit dresses I'd recommend it if you can find it somewhere, I've got good use out of it over the years and am sure I'll use it again.  I'm wondering now why I haven't yet made the long sleeve version....

McCall's 6069 Jersey Dress - 3rd time around

First thanks to all for your comments on my previous post, the navy faux wrap dress - just to address a few queries;

- the pattern is from an old issue of Burda Style magazine, May 2007, it might be possible to get a copy on ebay or it might even be somewhere on the Burda Style website, but how you search for it is a mystery to me.  There are a couple of similar patterns available that are worth checking out;
Simplicity 1653
Simplicity 2369

- Speaking of the mysterious Burda Style organisation, Perfect Nose provided a link to the French site which has a better picture.  Goodness knows why even the archive magazine content on each site is so different;
France from 09/2006
Germany from 08/2009
Russia from 01/2004 
and English language version still nothing since they deleted it all a few years ago
Argh, don't get me started!

- thank you to Sewing Sveta who confirmed that wrap and odour are indeed written the same in Russian, proving that computers aren't ready to replace human translators yet (though I have no doubt there are more sophisticated translation programmes out there than the free google one).

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Moving on to another dress........

With the obvious exception of the Aussies and Kiwis everyone seems to be moving to autumn sewing, but I am still firmly stuck in summer and very behind with this blog.  I will get some photos of me wearing this and a few other makes soon - I am going on holiday soon to Italy and will get some on location photos I promise!

I recently wore my maxi version of McCall's 6069, a very easy and popular pattern from a few years back and was reminded what a great summer dress it is, so I whipped up another one from this stripy rainbow printed jersey.  Unfortunately the pattern is no longer available on the Mccall's website.

When I say whipped up, I really do mean it - the pattern envelope states this is a 1 hour dress in terms of sewing time and I probably wasn't far off that.

For this version I copied an idea that I pinched from previous reviewers and used the plain square necked front of view C as the back, instead of having a cowl front and back.  It worked perfectly and, surprisingly to me given that it has no shaping whatsoever I can even wear the dress backwards though I doubt I will.

The only problem with the square neckline is that is is faced and despite understitching and topstitching it still kept creeping out, so I just trimmed it off close to the row of topstitching.  I would normally bind edges in a knit but I wasn't confident handling those square corners.

I can't believe I have never thought to make the long sleeve version of this so maybe if summer ever ends there will be a version 4.