McCall's 7122 embellished!

I have been eyeing the Alabama Chanin designs for so long and I tried embellishing on another garment and I simply love it.  I wanted to give this another try.  Here's what I came up with. 

I used this pattern from McCall's: 

An oldie, but a goodie!

I made the cap sleeve version of B but with the length of D.

I choose to embellish the bottom of the dress front and on the center upper back.

I like the contrast of the magenta with the blue.

I could have done a lot more but I am still playing with how this technique works best and don't want to commit to a huge project when I am in the learning stage.

I have always liked the fit of this dress.  It's comfortable and with the organic cotton, very soft.

Here you can see what I did on the back.

I pulled up the dress so you can better see the hemline.

Here is a close up of the work.  You can see my 'thread' is variegated.  Actually, I didn't use thread at all but yarn for knitting!  On a whim, I stopped at a local knitting shop to look for unique buttons and stumbled across this yarn.  It's 100% cotton, super soft and I really like the colors.  

The yarn was small width wise, but still a bit thick for hand sewing so I separated the strands in half and used 3/4 strands to sew with.

I used some magenta on the neckline to balance the design at the hem.

This is what the hand sewing looks like on the inside of the garment. 

Just a few notes, Alabama Chanin hand stitches their garments and leaves them unhemmed.  You can see by my photos, I did neither of those things! I machine stitched the entire thing and in between the areas on the hem, I added machine hems.  Maybe someday I will be able to sleep at night if I leave a hem undone, but for now, it ain't happening.

I like this a lot!  It's unique and since I love maxi's so much, it fits with my wardrobe quite nicely.  I will be looking for more ways to make these sewing techniques work!

Thanks for reading!

Sue