Knit Dresses from McCall's 5974

I purchased McCall's dress pattern M5974 based on the many positive reviews I saw on patternreview.com.  It is a Palmer/Pletsch dress for knit fabrics.  It is my habit to not a buy a pattern unless I like more than one view and this pattern was no exception.  I had purchased two pieces of ITY Jersey that I wanted to make into dresses.  I chose to make the View B with the scoop neck and long sleeves out of the brownpaisley fabric and the mock wrap V-neck out of the blue and aqua abstract print.

I made both dresses in size 12.  The only modifications I made were to shorten the sleeves by 2" and the length by 4".  I serged the seams and used a cover stitch machine to finish the sleeve hems.  The trickiest parts on both dresses were the neck lines.  I wanted to make sure that the v-neck did not gape and that the scoop neck would lie smoothly without distortion.  I bought iron tapes, bias for the scoop neck and straight grain for the v-neck.  I carefully laid the fabric on the pattern and then fused the tape onto the dress fabric with the edge lined up with the seam line.  I then used the tip of the iron to adhere the tape to the dress making sure that the fabric was the same shape as the pattern as a I moved along.  I then double folded the seam allowance and stitched in place.

I found this method allowed the neck edges to be very stable and easy to sew in place without distortion or stretching and both dresses lie smooth when worn.