McCalls 7574 - Feel Me Upwards

I'd made my first version of the raglan dress M7574 just moments before A's velour, long sleeved top and immediately knew what I wanted to do with the rest of that velour. I wanted another dress just like the first, only tighter, and maybe shorter....

Then came the request from my mother in law and I cut her top out mindful that I needed to save enough for my dress. I did, and there's still a bit left over. Love a bit of cut-and-come-again fabric!

I toyed with the idea of sizing down but couldn't be bothered with tracing the pattern all over again. So I figured instead, if I leave the pockets off I can just run the side seams in until I'm happy.

I shortened the dress below the waist by 3" and then got a bit nervous about those side slits. I ended up sewing them further closed than the pattern indicates as I thought they might be scandalously high. I kind of wish I'd left them the full slit as they're not that high after all.

Similar to the two tops, I cut the fabric with the nap going upwards. Although I can see the argument against that for a dress as I wonder if it won't catch and wear out more when sitting down. Since I'm loving wearing this dress and probably will wear it until it's threadbare I hope someone will tell me when the backside gets a bit see through. My husband, however, is quite happy that this dress requires him to pat me upwards :)

I took the side seams in by about 3/4" between the bust and the hips. Not that you'd be able to tell. It's still a comfortably loose T-shirt dress. If you want a tight dress with this pattern you'll need to size down for sure.

What did make a nice difference was to do a swayback adjustment to the flat pattern before I cut the dress. I overlapped the pattern tissue by an arbitrary 1" as below:

It was a windy day and my 9 year old was operating the camera so the photos may not show it, but the back and the resultant hem line is definitely an improvement.

I think this fabric may have made the shoulder wrinkles even harder to resolve than the stable ponti of my first version. I tried edgestitching them after tinkering with the curve, but then I just shrugged (that didn't help the shoulder situation btw) and got over it.

In conversation with some sewing friends on the weekend I was asked about "dealing with velour". I confess I made no special concessions for this fabric. I used a lot of pins so the fabric didn't have much of an option to "walk" as the seams were sewn. Swapping the regular presser foot for a walking foot would be a wise move. You should probably do that when you sew velour. Me, I just shrugged and poured a glass of red.