Hello Internet friends!

Well this summer has been a bit weird for me (all the migraine and health issues have not been fun!) still trying to figure out all the health things so blog posting has fallen to the wayside. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t been making things though! So today I’m sharing two summery makes! Two different versions of the same maxi dress, the Marcel Dress by Chalk and Notch patterns!

Let’s go in chronological order and start with my stripped version! When I spied this striped rayon during a trip to Dressew I knew I wanted to make a fun maxi dress out of it and play with contrasting vertical and horizontal lines. While the Marcel dress had been on my radar it wasn’t until finding this fabric and searching for a perfect pattern that I seriously considered making it. When the pattern first came out last year I wasn’t totally feeling the gathered tiers but fast forward one year and I can see how Gabriela of Chalk and Notch was on point with gathers and ruffles being an emerging trend! 

Since the maxi dress has 5 tiers I opted to keep the centre panel with vertical stripes (aka let’s add some illusionary length to my 5’ 1/16th” height) and then alternated horizontal and vertical stripes for the tired panels. Since panel 5 is  quite long, and essentially need to be cut on the cross grain, I alternated the direction of the panels based up on the 5th one being vertical. 

For sizing I cut a straight size 12 in the A/B cup In terms of alterations I think the only thing I did was to shorten the overall length of the dress by 5” (I say I think that was the only alteration for a reason, more on that in a bit). I chose 5” not only because then I could conveniently remove and even 1” from each panel and then a total of 5 from the centre front and centre back panels, but also because I typically remove between 3-5” in length due to #ShortGirlProblems. (But honestly mostly because the math was easy to just remove a total of 5”)

I REALLY love how this version turned out. I’ve worn it a bunch over the last 2 months and I can see it getting a lot more use as the weather is still super hot on the west cost. I have thought about making two mods to it after wearing it so much; 1 would be to add some thread chains and snaps to help with hiding my bra straps, however I don’t think adding them to just the front of the straps will help much other than stopping the top of my bra cup from peeking out. I’d have to add a whole additional set to the back straps to hide the straps at the back and those would be a pain to snap into place on one’s own. The second modification would be to see if I could add pockets….I’m hesitant on this one as it would involve cutting into the middle of one of the panels and it may ruin the gathered tier effect…I have some fabric left over so we’ll see if I’m brave enough to attempt that mod!

Since I loved my first version so much I decided I wanted to make a second version in a bold print. I managed to snag the last 2m of this tropical rayon again from Dressew! (Shoutout to the lovely Dressew employee who noticed that they had an extra meter of this fabric and that I had ordered 2m of every other fabric in my online order except this one as only 1m was listed so they emailed to ask if I wanted the full 2m! THANK YOU!) 

Now when I say I ‘think’ I only made the length alteration it comes down to the fitting of this second version. Since I loved the first of the first and I didn’t make any notes on the pattern pieces other than the length AND there were no other notes for this pattern in the ‘pattern notes’ section of my phone I thought I was good to go with cutting then getting straight to sewing. 

It was only after I finished sewing it all together that I noticed some under arm gaping when I tried it on. So I took to my seam ripper and opened up the side seam at the armscye and took in the seam by sewing at a 5/8” seam allowance at the top and then tapered to the pattern’s included 3/8” as it reached the first gathered tier. I was worried this alteration would take a fair amount of time but due to me actually doing a good pressing job at all the seams while making the dress the whole alteration was done in about 20 min total for both sides. 

Having done the alteration the fit is much better, however I am considering taking up the back straps by about 1/4-3/” as the back feels lower than my first version. I’m also starting to get a vague memory of basing and test fitting the bodice of my first version, and while I don’t remember making any mods after that test fit, I think it’s worth a search through my sewing space for an errant sticky notes with alteration notes from my first version that never made it into my pattern notes on my phone or back onto the original pattern pieces. 

Hope you guys like both of my Marcel Maxi dresses! I’m hoping that my health gets a bit better so I can squeeze in some more summery makes before summer is over!