Saturday, April 21, 2018

McCall 3588: The 'Town and Country Dress Suit'


Ah, McCall 3588 – I love this pattern! It's a classic dress suit, perfect for town or country.


This project has been sitting in my sewing queue for quite a while! I had the dress all cut-out for several years. The red dress fabric is a very nice stretch cotton, which was a dream to sew with.  The dress features two princess seamed sections (attached with overlapped seams):



The skirt features several pleats in the front that line up with the princess seamed bodice and the bodice centre front. I do love a pleated skirt:


In addition to the dress (which you can do long or short sleeves – I opted for the latter so that I could layer up through most of the Scottish seasons), this pattern has an amazing jacket:



I recently sewed this jacket up in a silk/linen blend fabric (see blog post here). I was actually working on the jackets at the same time.  I like doing that sometimes--cutting out the same pattern in multiple fabrics. It's amazing how differently the pattern looks with different fabrics!


One of the annoying things I did with this dress was sew the buttonholes too close to the bodice edge. Urgh! So aggravating. So I get a bit of a bodice gap (see the photo above).  The dress actually closes with a side zip as well as the bodice buttons. I'm thinking of maybe sewing up the bodice front (so that it's not a functional opening)--as I think because this is stretch cotton and a v-neck that I could still get the dress on without opening the front.  That would certainly satisfy the gap problem!


I absolutely adore the wool jacket fabric that I found in a local UK fabric store (Manchester, I think?)
I have enough of the wool fabric to either make a matching pleated skirt to go with the jacket OR to make a swing coat to go over the whole ensemble. Hmmm....I'm leaning towards the latter as there are several nice 1940 swing coat patterns I have and I just love the matchy-matchy look from the 1940s.  The look of having matching fabrics for the swing coat and the jacket underneath!  What do you think? Skirt or swing coat?


We took these photos at the base of Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park. Look at these little guys photobombing! hahaha.


I do love a good suit and the best thing about sewing is that I can match it to my shoes and other accessories! woohoo!


YAY! Super happy for a new office AND weekend appropriate outfit...and the fact that it's finally Spring!!! 

Photographs: Darja Bilyk
Location: Near Holyrood Park

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2 comments

  1. Red! Would be perfect for Fall also.

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  2. This is so perfect, you could be modeling for a 1940 magazine layout! Your hair is especially great here. You'd probably get more use from a skirt, but a matching swing coat sounds so wonderful I'd jump at that.

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I read each and every comment--thank you so much!

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