Rick Rack, Lassie's Wacked, give that dog a bone.

Okay folks I did it, after over a month of working on McCalls 5861, I am finished. Well, not exactly. Now that I have seen it in photos from behind, I see there are some issues that need fixing. Mostly around the waist where it meets in the back. It also may need a snap or eye-hook to keep it closed in the back (more about that later). Wishing hubby had asked me to move so his truck was not coming out of my head in all the photos. And there are the 3 goats watching in the background. Billy, Helen and Maude. Nicky the German Shepard makes his second debut on the blog and of course Angel finds her way into a picture.

As you can see, I have made a couple of changes.

1. My waist is not as small as the said pattern suggested and so the buttons do not go up in a straight line but rather on a diagonal.
2. I changed the pockets by lining them with the striped sear sucker and then flipping the top down and adding matching buttons .
3. I also had to totally change the darts in the bust. If you look at the photo below you will see on the right hand side where the darts were before I changed them. Let's just say they were up around my neck and no where near fitting me.

Since I did not have "Hazel" my  body double yet (I will introduce you to her soon) I was having fitting problems and did not figure it out until the whole dress was put together. I had to take the bodice from the skirt on both sides (remember it is a double sided dress) AND I took out all the gathers from the skirt and started over.

I tried to show you where the old and new darts are with this photo. If you look closely I have written it in red on the right hand side.

 

 4. I added rick rack all around the hem. This happened because I could not find an off white rick rack at my sewing store so I ordered 7 yards on line. No big deal, but 14 days after the post office said it would arrive the tracking on it said it was in STILL in Springfield Ma.and HAD been there for 14 days. I thought it might be one of those circumstances where it shows up long after I am gone and departed and so I ordered 7 more yards, which I received in 4 days and then of course almost 30 days after ordering it, the other 7 yards arrived. The hem on this baby is HUGE...did I say HUGE and it would have taken me years to hem it. So I rick racked it.

Here is a photo of my hallway and the fabric before I gathered it. Of course my kitty Angel is always nearby.

 Here is the skirt flared out a bit so you can see how much fabric there is.

The mail man arrived just in time to see me doing this photo shoot. Now all the neighbors are surely going to think I am the resident "Lisa Douglas" and I wasn't even wearing my cat eye sun glasses. Well the back of this dress just laps over the fabric and do I dare say as I took this photo I "may" have flashed the mail man!!!

Woops..that's better.                       And me laughing hysterically at the thought of what I just did.

Don't you just love the scarf too. Picked it up the day before for 50 cents at my favorite thrift store.

Another little problem that only I will know about is that the rick rack is not cotton and thus melts when ironed. I only found this out after melting a bit of it while ironing seams. Look on the top layer midway down the neckline.

And here is the reverse side, which is much plainer. I guess this could be a day to evening dress.

Hubby was heading out and in a hurry to photo me so I did not have time to straighten the bonks out of the hem. There is also a real problem on this side with the waist and how the buttons meet. This will have to be addressed.

This dress was featured in McCalls Summer Magazine 1961 as a mother/daughter outfit.

Now onto new things.