One of Meg McElwee’s patterns, I made my Metamorphic dresses during Me Made May. I liked the idea of making a reversible dress – I would get two dresses out of one make. I knew that it might be a bit of a challenge with its curved hem and lined bodice. As it turns out, two dresses means twice as much work.

Before I started the dress, I made a muslin of the bodice as suggested to make sure I had a good fit. Based on that, I rotated both shoulder straps in by a quarter inch, and made a second muslin reflecting the changes to make sure I liked it. It was perfect, so I used the adjusted bodice piece for both of the dresses I made.For both versions I made, with careful cutting, I had enough fabric left over a smaller project.

Version 1: black tie dye rayon on one side, batik rayon on the other. I hit the wall at every stage of making this dress, from sewing machine tension issues to trying to figure out how to finish the seams without a serger to seam ripping to following directions poorly. Sometimes I did the right thing only to screw it up, catching fabric into a seam it didn’t belong in, etc. It felt like a metaphor for life – when I rushed, or was stubborn, things would go wrong, and when I slowed down and surrendered to the process, things started flowing again. Maybe too deep for a sewing project?

I used a lightweight fusible interfacing to bind the edges of the fabric for both layers. It worked OK, but it made it really difficult to gather the top of the skirt, and it added bulk at the sides, where there are four layers of it together with the front and back of both dresses. You can’t see it when I’m wearing it, but I can feel it. I’m hoping it softens in the wash, but not so much that it comes off and my dress unravels. (I taught my kids the classic Weezer song “Undone – the Sweater Song,” and if they were reading this, they would chime in singing here.)If I had to do it again I would have used a product that was specifically for binding rayon edges. If the interfacing breaks down over time, I may re-do it, but as it stands, fusible interfacing is almost impossible to remove, so it’s going to have to stay for now. I was eager to start my project and my local craft store didn’t have any better options. I didn’t want to wait for another online order to arrive before I got started.

The dress wasn’t compatible with French seams, which is too bad! It is my favorite way to finish seams on rayon projects. I WAS glad I used the interfacing around the edges of the in-seam pockets, though. It makes them a little sturdier and easier to find.The black rayon was a little stretchier than the batik, and the bodice never totally lay flat for me in a couple of places even though the seams matched up. At the front of one armscye, the other layer of the dress shows. It was difficult to press, even with a ham, and it seems like even though the layers started out the same size, the black side ended up slightly bigger than the batik. I don’t know that anyone else would notice. Poor pressing on my part? Stretched out rayon? Not sure. But I stopped fighting with it before I put iron prints in the delicate fabric, so that was a win.

Version Two: Indian Cotton, block print/Shibori dye. As mentioned above, a number of seams had to be finished before sewing the dress. In this version, instead of interfacing, I folded those seams over a quarter inch, and then another quarter inch and stitched it closed. I adjusted my seam allowance when putting the dress together and this gave me a really nice finish.I added an inch to the length of both layers of the second dress. With my method of finishing the seams, I ate up more of this extra length than I thought (while I adjusted the seam allowance on the sides, it was harder to do where I attached the gathered skirt to the bodice). The finished scooped hem in back ends just below my rear, which is too short for comfort. If I had to do it again, I would have added 2 inches to the hem, and would consider using the under layer pattern for the back of the top dress, which is an option suggested in the pattern, rather than the scooped hem in the back and the front. The under layer is just about as short as I’d be willing to go. With the scoop, the top layer is significantly higher at the shortest section. It will work, but lesson learned.

I did the front patch pockets on this one and was able to avoid many of the mistakes I made with the rayon version. The hem was the most difficult since the thin cotton didn’t have a lot of body and was fraying in all directions, so it was hard to train it to the line I needed in order to hem it. I also wish I hadn’t used white thread on the white and blue side. The fabric is primarily blue, and it feels like the hem is screaming with the white thread. You can see it glowing from the bottom edge of the dress in the pic despite it being far away and reduced resolution. (As the maker of this garment I might be the only one who would notice that.)

It was interesting to make the dress with two really different fabric types. The rayon is super soft and hangs heavy. Even though I added less length to that version, it ended up being longer than the cotton dress. The cotton version feels very airy and light in comparison. The first day I wore it was blustery. It felt like it was going to blow up over my head, and I’m no Marilyn Monroe.

It was a bit disappointing to work so hard end up with a dress that was a hair shorter than I’d hoped. I take responsibility for not taking the fabric’s drape and my finished seams fully into account when I cut the fabric for the second dress.

In the cotton version, I stabilized the shoulders with one strip of interfacing on each side under the seam. I also used a strip of interfacing on the front side of the pockets to give them a little more structure.

I found the dress to be pretty labor intensive, with all the seams that needed to be finished before I even began and the never-ending hems of doom. Once I start sewing, I want to see things come together quickly, and this wasn’t that type of project for me. Some parts of it came together satisfyingly fast, but the beginning and the end (finishing edges, then hemming) mean that the project is sandwiched with tedious sewing tasks.

Up until now, all the women’s clothing patterns I’ve used have been from Rae of Made by Rae. Her patterns are made for people like me – sewing isn’t our whole lives, but we aren’t helpless with a sewing machine, either. The instructions are easy to follow. They explain why we’re doing what we’re doing, and don’t leave much to the imagination. The different pattern sizes are color-coded and easy to distinguish.

Meg’s patterns are different. The sizes are distinguished by black and white dotted lines which start to swim together as you trace your size (I use freezer paper to trace my pattern pieces). The instructions were a bit oblique at times. I felt like she was a mother duck nudging her little ducklings into the open water and inviting us to swim on our own for the first time.

Meg’s Arenite pants, which were released more recently, had directions that were more clear for a hobby sewist, both with explaining techniques and explaining the “why.” With the Metamorphic dress, there would be an instruction, and I’d think, oh, I’ll just do it my way, only to discover that the instructions had it the other way for a reason and just didn’t explain why we were doing it that way.

Best sewing practice would have been to read the entire pattern instructions through before beginning. If I had done that, it might have prevented some of the issues I encountered. I just wanted to GO by the time I had my pieces cut out and finished as instructed, so I ended up following the instructions step-by-step without a clear idea of what would happen next.

Conclusion? This dress is cute, but it was a lot of work! I want to take what I learned from the first two versions and make one more, a little longer, and made with lightweight cotton. I love the prints of the blue/black dress, but it’s just short enough that I fear I won’t wear it too often. I’d like to make one whose length is firmly in my comfort zone.

Many thanks to Three, who took my pics. As for the one of me in the purple batik side of the rayon dress: I wore it two separate times with the intention of getting photos of it on those days, and both days were terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. The third time I thought about wearing it just so I could take a photo of it (which I NEVER do), was also a terrible day, so I just gave up and used a pic of me with a look of subtle, but abject, misery.