McCall’s M7091 – Bridesmaid’s dress

Back in October 2018, I was asked to make a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s daughter to wear to her uncle’s wedding.  The pattern that the bride and groom chose was McCall’s M7091, which is a special occasion dress which includes the option for a skirt flounce overlay which can be asymmetrical or short at the front and low at the back.  The couple’s colour theme was a beautiful violet colour, so they chose a rich purple satin dupion for the bodice and overlay flounce, and lilac for the the underskirt, with coordinating satin lining.

Making this dress was such a lot of hard work.  Even just tracing the correct size and cutting the pattern took an entire day!  Not only is the dress is made up of so many panels (12, I think?!), but also if you’re making the asymmetrical overlay like I did, then each piece has to be cut single layer, so even before you start sewing, you’ll have invested a couple of days in this project already.

The bridesmaid’s first fitting of the calico toile I made revealed that the back needed some alteration.  The one advantage of a panelled dress is that you have plenty of options to customise the fit!

Once the alterations were all sorted, I really enjoyed making the dress.  Almost every seam is a French seam.  I’m so happy with how it turned out.  The bridesmaid looked beautiful on the day, and not long after her mum got some studio shots of her wearing the dress.