McCall's 6891 Liberty Linen Dress

by thedressmaker - 15:47

Sewing summer vintage-inspired dresses is still my favourite type of dressmaking. Seeing this gorgeous Liberty print cotton and linen fabric made me want to create one almost immediately.

Even though I don’t need as many summer dresses anymore, I still add some to my wardrobe every so often. This year I wanted a shirt floral dress with a collar. But the print I envisioned was something a bit unusual for me - not the bright coloured and big scaled, but muted and ditsy. That’s exactly what Edenham Augusta Linen is. Despite the name, it’s a cotton and linen blend.

Just like described by Liberty itself, it’s a cool and durable fabric. It has the texture and look of linen, but thanks to the added cotton it’s much softer than pure linen fabrics. It was very easy to work with and it pressed perfectly. On top of it, it’s not opaque at all, so you don’t need any lining. And I’m absolutely in love with the delicate “northern” field flower print! To the degree that I want it everywhere now - at least cross stitched on walls.

The pattern I used is McCall's 6891. It’s a classy shirt dress with different sleeve options. I picked the one with short sleeves and a belt. The fabric was too gorgeous to have any unpleasant surprises, so I started with a muslin. The size I picked was perfect so I didn’t change anything. What I did differently was the sewing process - I skipped the instructions on some steps, especially on the collar. I preferred to use a more traditional and neat technique used on jackets and I wasn’t disappointed! I loved this pattern because it was easy to work with and you can quickly and easily achieve perfect fit thanks to the belt.