Toadstool Rayon M7969

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I have a fabric that I love so much and I save it for so long without sewing it because I’m waiting for the PERFECT pattern that is worthy of it that when I go to actually cut it I feel…stressed? No? Just me? That’s basically the story of this toadstool print rayon I have from Sarah Watt’s last collection under the Cotton+Steel name (Front Yard). I loved it so so so much from the moment I laid eyes on it, but bought it with no pattern in mind. I just knew one day it needed to be on my body in some format. The five founding designers left Cotton+Steel to form Ruby Star Society in 2018 which means I’ve been holding onto this fabric for at least 3 years. Until now. I cut it. I sewed it. I made it into a McCall’s M7969, which somehow I totally missed during its complete rampage through the sewing community in 2020. And it is the exact combination of pattern and fabric that I was waiting for all of that time, and I have zero regrets. It makes me wiggle with happiness when I wear it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fabric consumption and fabric stashes lately. I switched to storing my fabrics in clear plastic bins a couple years ago, and I have them sorted by substrate/type of fabric. The cotton garment fabrics are together, the linens are together, canvases, rayons, quilting cottons, bottom weights, etc. It makes it easier to know what I have in a broad way. But there’s still a LOT of fabric in my stash. And last year during the first lockdown, I went through a lot of it and was sewing a lot of stash fabrics because it was much easier and cheaper to shop from what I had than to try to get new fabric with local stores being curbside only. I really didn’t miss fabric shopping at all, and honestly my spending habits for fabric have been completely different since last year.

The thing that has changed again for me recently is that I’m going to be moving in August/September of this year, and it’s made me think about the sheer volume of fabric I have. I want it to become clothes that I can wear! I also find it’s been a good push to actually destash. Butttt, a lot of the fabrics are ones that I ADORE, like this toadstool print, and I didn’t want to just sew them up carelessly. I know, I know, it’s only fabric. But when I’ve been saving it this long, it seems silly not to put in the work to make it a garment I will totally love and wear all the time.

Which brings me to the point: I did three muslins of M7969 before I cut into the toadstools. THREE. Who even am I? The first one was intended to be a peplum top but then it turns out these beautiful sleeves are giant fabric hogs and my peplum didn’t even reach my belly button. So, not exactly a wearable muslin. That one was a size small. I had read a bunch of blog posts about how you should size down, but in retrospect it occurs to me that that might have been the recommendation of people who don’t normally make Big 4 patterns. Because I sized down a size from my sized-down size that I usually make in McCall’s. MISTAKE. It was so tight and gaped a lot. So even if the peplum hadn’t been comically short, it wouldn’t have been wearable anyway. (My measurements are 37.5″/30.5″/39″ currently, for reference). I also found the neckline very low, and as a teacher I want to have the option to wear it to work, so I needed to fix that. But muslin number one was enough to get me completely obsessed with the sleeves and very excited about where the project was going.

Muslin number two was a VERY quick and (honestly shamelessly) dirty bodice with very hacked off sleeves. I did a medium, and also used this tutorial from The Sara Project on how to raise the neckline of M7969. I did exactly the same thing she did, which was to extend the bottom edge of each front piece at center front and then redraw the line from that corner back up to the top. You also need to make sure your bias binding piece is extended as well to match. In this muslin, I had a ton of gaping at the front, but also had not done any stay-stitching at all and gambled on the fact that I might have stretched out the bias edge when sewing it. To check the fit with the shoulders, since the top edge of the raglan sleeve is gathered into the bias binding, I sewed a little scrap of binding at the correct length onto the top of each sleeve to hold it in place. It fit well enough to forge ahead to actually make a dress instead of just a bodice. I should mention that I…accidentally didn’t trace the back bodice piece in a size medium and didn’t realize until I was just about to cut out the second muslin. So I traced around the small back bodice piece and then graded it by measuring the difference between the small and medium of the front bodice at side seam and adding that to the side of the back one, and then eyeballing the other edges based on the scale in the digital PDF file (which I peered at on my phone). It turned out pretty well. All of it lined up and it fits. So I never bothered going back to the original. YOLO?

I posted the third muslin on Instagram already, which was ACTUALLY wearable and turned out well. I used a black tencel something-or-other that I got from Patch ages ago. I had intended to use it for my “real” version of this tracing off project, but I’ve honestly abandoned that because the traced off version no longer fits me after having been rock climbing for almost three years and growing shoulders. And I’m in Sew That Stash mode and have no inclination to hold onto fabrics for nebulous future projects. So I binned the traced off pattern pieces and sewed the black fabric and I am glad I did. I didn’t have quite enough for the skirt to be as wide as intended, but it still had a decent amount of gathering and I’ll definitely wear it lots. And I felt very confident that I could cut into the toadstools (which I miraculously had exactly the right amount of, even though M7969 is a fabric guzzler) and end up with a dress that would fit. Which brings us to the present!

Honestly, I’m SO INTO THE SLEEVES. I somehow never boarded the statement sleeve train even when it was going full steam ahead, but I’m on it now. The M7969 sleeves are the perfect sleeves. I love that they’re raglan – it’s so much easier to fit my shoulders with raglan garments. I love that they are gathered at top AND bottom. I love the length; they are just below elbow, don’t get in my way when I’m doing things with my hands, and don’t bunch up at the elbow. (I’m 5’4″, for reference re: arm length). And they make me feel swishy. The panels of the skirt are complete rectangles which makes it very easy to hem. There was quite a bit of hand-sewing on the wrong side of the binding at neckline and sleeve bottom, and I’ve seen lots of people machine stitch it instead. But when I’m imbued with Big Project Energy I’m willing to take the time, and as you probably guessed from the three muslins, this was a Big Project in terms of mental energy and time investment. So I hand-stitched it all. Even the first and third muslins got completely hand-stitched. I serged everything else to finish it, including the seam allowances that got enclosed by the binding. I know it’s excessive, but I find serging helps reduce the bulk and keeps the gathers more controlled for enclosure and hand-sewing.

Another thing I want to note is that this was my first time working with a McCall’s digital pattern. I was reluctant to try, because the only previous time I used a Big 4 digital pattern was a Simplicity backpack pattern I made in 2015/2016 and it was…clunky. I had to download what felt like ’90s-era digital protection software in order to open the file, I think there were a lot of obstacles with printing it, and then I still had to assemble the whole thing. But M7969 was so popular that I couldn’t find a hard copy anywhere, even online, so I went for it. And…it was a PDF. An unprotected PDF, watermarked with my email address. It was magical. I think they’re trying to get with the times in terms of indie pattern company PDF formatting and style, and it’s VERY close. The printing margins are a little odd and I didn’t notice until I’d trimmed the pages and had to retrim, but I’ll know for next time. The instructions have a lot more detail. The formatting is easy to follow. I had a great experience. I even liked that they had the same seam allowance for all of the elements of the pattern, including attaching the bias binding at 5/8″ instead of making it more narrow. I think that makes it even more beginner friendly. Full disclosure: after the first muslin, I did things completely out of order and honestly didn’t even look at the instructions once, but that’s how straightforward a sew it is! I recommend beginners actually look at the instructions, but there’s nothing weird at all in the construction. And no closures or elastic or anything. Highly recommend M7969 for both sewing and wearing experiences.

So, that brings me to the end of this ramble about M7969. I have 3-4 pieces of rayon left in my stash, and I have rayon momentum. I looked through the entire database on The Foldline after searching “rayon” so I feel invested. The pattern I’m wanting to try next is the Sway Dress by Papercut Patterns, which I didn’t realize was discontinued until recently and had a scramble to get my hands on a hardcopy before it was really gone forever. (Which, does anyone know why they discontinued it? I thought it was a big crowd-pleaser of a pattern). And now that I’ve sewn the toadstools, I have a bit more “it’s just fabric” brain and am probably not going to make three muslins. Also thinking of a second maxi version of the Charlie Caftan in this large scale Ruby Star Society print. Tell me your rayon pattern recommendations! Tell me your stash sewing experiences!