McCall's 6696 With Vintage Fabric

Happy Easter! 

I am so glad that it is finally starting to feel like spring here. Dress sewing has kicked into high gear!

This dress is my second version of McCall's 6696, which is unquestionably one of my favorite patterns lately.

[I'm still struggling with a variety of blog issues, so in the meantime, I've decided to continue on with my backlog of completed and photographed outfits. The show must go on!]

I made this version with some 1940s rayon fabric I purchased on Etsy.

The fabric is very soft and has a fantastic drape.

I originally bought it thinking that I could wear it with tights and a sweater for the end of winter, but as soon as the dress was complete, I realized that this dress is unequivocally a warm-weather dress. It's just too floaty and drapey for cold weather. And the fabric is quite thin, which will be nice when it starts to get hot. (And for swing dance!)

Overall, this fabric was fairly easy to work with. It is rayon, but it's not very shiny or shifty, so it was fine to work with.

The only trouble I had was picking a thread color!

I finally settled on dark grey as somewhat of a contrast.

The blue has so much white in it that none of my blue threads really looked "right" to me. Dark grey seemed a good compromise.

The top-stitching on this dress is not quite perfect (I'm not used to working with rayon) and the dark thread does help disguise that, which is a side benefit.

This dress is a little big in the waist -- more so that my other version, which is just comfortably loose. The interfacing in the waistband and placket is what I normally use for shirts, but, in retrospect, I should have used something lighter. The waistband sags a bit sometimes. Honestly, though, it's kind of a "look." It looks a bit more casual/drapey like that.

I also had trouble picking buttons. I went with white, but I might change them out at some point. They are a bit more of a contrast than I expected.

Overall, though, I like this dress! It's the first time I've worked with real vintage fabric, so that was really fun.

Have you all tried working with vintage fabrics? Where do you buy them?