Hundreds of Apples dress

Here it is, my first project all semester!  Sorry about the lateness, I know in my next post I said I'd post this the next day.  I've been waiting for a day when this horrible forehead acne breakout I've been having settles down, but it doesn't look like it's going to, so I'll just go with it!

I'd been eyeballing this material at Spotlight for a while, but for months and months and months it was on the $15 a metre table, and I decided that even though I love it, I don't love it quite that much!!  These last holidays, when I was doing A Christmas Carol, we were actually there for another reason entirely and I spotted my apple material on sale for $5 a metre - so of course, I just HAD to have it!

I also had McCall's M6503 sitting around in my pattern stash, and I have been itching for another dress in this style, so it was a match made in heaven.  Interesting story: I was going to time how long this dress took me, but I realised when it took me three hours to cut out the pattern and the material and mark it all that the figure was going to be ridiculously huge!!

I made view D, with the standup collar, pleated skirt, and sleeves.  I also added piping along the lines of the collar and the waistband, which was an adventure - I've never done that before, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!  I got little wooden buttons to close the front of the dress, but I'm not entirely sold on them - what do you think?  I've been considering switching them out for some self-cover buttons with red satin, to go with the piping, but I think that might be a bit TOO matchy.

I even did some tricky stuff at the junction of the collar - though I tried to be all artsy with my photo and it didn't turn out properly...

I'm really proud of how the inside turned out, although it is a bit of a mish-mash of seam finishing techniques - both proper ones and ones I sort of made up as I went along!  The right side is all french seamed, including the pocket - I tried this tutorial that I found on Pinterest, and it worked wonderfully!  The pocket pattern was borrowed from Butterick B5317, which I've used three times to make (as yet unblogged) dresses for myself and my sisters.  The pocket is only on the right hand side, because I only usually use the right pocket in my dresses/skirts - though it would be good to have it on the other side too!  Does anybody know how to add a pocket to a seam with an invisible zipper in it?

The left side has this strange sort of seam finish that I sort of made up myself - it's kind of like Hong Kong seaming I think, except it's done with double fold bias tape that I just folded over the edge and stitched once.  Anyway, all of the edges are tucked in, so that's nice.
The shoulder seams are done in a similar way, and then stitched down pointing towards the back.

I used the same technique for the sleeve/armhole edges as I did for my Style Print dress, flat felled around a curve.  This time I had a bit of trouble making the edges sit properly, so I basted the seam twice - once straight after I had trimmed the inside (bodice) edge to half its size, I folded the sleeve edge over to the seam line, and once basting it into its final position.  I then sewed the seam on the machine as usual, and removed the basting, and it worked perfectly!

The only change I made to the pattern was to make an 8 at the shoulders/bust tapering out to a 10 at the waistline and skirt, which seemed to work perfectly!  Anyway, that's about all of note for this dress, so have a lovely day and thank you for visiting!