The raglan sleeve for my dress in progress. You can see the organza interlining on top of the matelassé.

I’m making McCall’s 6460, a simple sheath dress with raglan short sleeves, out of the silk-blend matelassé I blogged about May 22. Here’s a quick recap of my sewing process so far:

1. Since this pattern was new to me, I made a muslin
2. Made minor adjustments to the muslin to accommodate my shape (rectangle)
3. Cut out pattern pieces in silk organza (I’m using silk organza for interlining) and transferred all markings (darts and seams) to it
4. Pinned organza pieces to the matelassé and cut, using organza pieces as guides
5. Hand-basted organza to matelassé at seams and thread-traced all darts (two layers of fabric now neatly held together as one)
6. Hand-basted dress’s darts and seams and tried dress on for fit (just because your muslin fits doesn’t mean your fashion fabric will behave the same way)
7. Hooray! I got lucky and the fit is spot on
8. Machine-stitched everything, which went super-fast because so many seams and darts were already held together by basting (skipped pinning)

You probably read steps 1 through 6 and thought aaugh! that’s a lot of work to do before even sitting down to a sewing machine. Truth be told, the prep work goes quickly, and you avoid ripping out stitches in your fashion fabric (and potentially damaging it). Work out your fit issues before you machine stitch and you’ll always save loads of time in the long run. Now I just need to construct my dress’s lining, attach it and that’s it.

How do you feel about hand-basting? Hate it with a passion, or think of it as peaceful communing with your fabric? Let me know!