Definite probability of Macaron: The hunt for Red October continues...

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In a great rush and very much at the last minute^*, I made the Definite Probability of Colette's Macaron in time both to wear for
Hallowe'en at school and to have as a Sew Red October dress. I had these quilting-weight card fabrics sitting in my gently increasing stash for a while and in an effort to make some room in the bins, I resolved to make something out of them to wear when I teach probability, which dubious pleasure I have in two different courses this year^**. The irony is that while I am in the middle of the probability chapter for one of those courses, I didn't see that class yesterday. Oh well.

This is my second Macaron dress, and I'm still liking the pattern more than I expected. I made the same alterations: lengthen the waistband by 1.5", sew a 1/4" seam at the shoulders. The sleeves, which bother me a bit on the pistachio Macaron, don't seem to be an issue with this one, which I'm putting down to the difference in fabric.


I squeezed the bodice top, waistband, skirt, pockets, and sleeves out of 2 yards of the card fabric, and the yoke out of slightly more than a fat quarter of the pips fabric. I didn't cut any facings. I was thinking of using the fabric with the dice for the sleeves, but when I pre-soaked the fabric, the red dye bled over all of them. Judicious use of OxyClean got the stains out of the main and yoke fabric, but the other stuff remains sadly splotchy and reddened. Perhaps it is embarrassed by what it did.

Because I started this so late and was rushing to finish it in time^***, I cut quite a few corners. None of the seams are finished and I should go back and redo the hem. I'm not especially fussed, though, since I will wear this dress infrequently.


I'm not really sure what to do about the waist with this dress. Part of that may be because I'm not sure where the waistband is supposed to sit. On the one hand, it feels a bit high -- even with lengthening, the bottom sits a bit above my natural waistline (which is pretty low). On the other, the skirt narrows into the waist quite a bit, so if I extend the waistband or bodice much more, I might have some difficulty getting that part to fit. Suggestions?

I apologise for the crumpled state of the dress. I took these at the end of the day.

I think I have avoided the dreaded dress-over-tshirt look by making the sleeves in the main fabric. It wasn't until I took these pictures that I noticed the ... unfortunate... pattern placement. This is what you get when you work with prints. Let's ignore that and admire my ribbon piping along the bustline. Now I am wondering if I should have piped the sleeves as well...

I tried my first binding-finished neckline and completely messed it up. I might take it out and bind it with thin black stretch elastic instead, since I think the neckline needs some definition.


I now possess an invisible zipper foot, but I didn't use it on this dress. There was a moment of panic when I realized I didn't have any zippers long enough. I wound up taking it out of the as-yet-unfinished V8728. (I would have had to take it out anyway to make that dress fit, and now I can buy a blue zipper that will actually match that dress. It's a win-win.) I put in a fairly successful lapped zipper. I think the busy-ness of the fabric hides any glaring errors.

I should have made the skirt longer, but I was concerned about running out of fabric. (In hindsight, it would have been fine.) If I redo the hem, I'll try that lovely binding trick again. This dress seems a lot shorter than the pistachio Macaron, though the pictures belie that feeling.

To turn this from merely wacky dress into costume for the day, I made a fascinator out of cards. Two other teachers were dressing as scientitsts, so I added Dirac's equation and called myself a metaphor for the electron wavefunction.


So now I have two Macarons. I think I'd like to made a plaid version, because I really like this one. I am thinking something for autumn/winter, so maybe a wool flannel with longer sleeves. This also makes two items finished in time for the Red October challenge, which is pretty good. I'd still like to make the red bathing suit dress^****, but I'll wait until December when I plan to wear it to the Dovercourt Holiday Ball.

So next up is the cape for the Tweed Rally. The pattern is partially cut out, and I need to buy a flannel sheet to interline it so it will actually be warm. I will have a cape. Sorry Edna.



^*As in, I was still desperately hemming the dress not 5 minutes before I had to leave for work.

^**At least I get to show them how planning to win the lottery is not a useful retirement plan.

^***This is a habit of mine that I really need to break. It's making for sloppy everything. My excuse this time is that I got busy with marking and then the fabric issues meant that I had to wait a day longer to cut out the fabric.

^****And I have a month and a half to come up with a much better name. Ugh.