Casual McCall's 6696 With No Collar

McCall's 6696 strikes again!

Readers, I, like so many before me, have fallen in love with this pattern.

This is version three for me (you can see the other two versions here and here).

For this one, I omitted the collar. Originally I intended to do a collared version, but I had a small issue with the pattern: I lost the back yoke pattern piece.

No problem, I thought -- I could trace off the piece from one of my finished dresses! 

So I did. 

It looked fine. The dress came together fine. 

Until I tried to add the collar stand, which was comically and ridiculously too small for the dress. 

Woops. 

Bias tape, as usual, saved the day. I bound off the neckline the same way I bound off the sleeves and decided to call this dress "casual."

The missing/redrawn yoke piece seems to have caused some fitting issues in the back of the dress, You can definitely see some drag lines heading toward my armpits. But I don't think you'll be surprised to learn that this does not bother me.

For the first time, I added the belt loops to the waistband and I'm very pleased with the way they turned out. 

I also decided to topstitch the entire dress with white thread.

The fabric is a lovely shirting from Blackbird Fabrics, but I had a very difficult time finding a thread match, so I decided to do contrast topstitching and buttons to match the topstitching. The bias binding I used inside also is white.

(The buttons are shirt buttons from Fashion Sewing Supply -- their site might look a bit sketchy, but their quality is great!) 

Overall, I'm pleased with this dress. I find it appropriate for work on casual Fridays and very comfortable.

I've also worn it swing dancing a few times!

I think the moral of this dress is that one need not be dismayed when disaster strikes: An ill-fitting collar stand might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

And don't worry -- I've since bought another copy of this pattern!