M6030 Part 2 -- Choosing the Fabric

This is Part 2 of a series on McCall's pattern M6030.  Choosing the fabric.  As I talked about in Part 1, she had a swatch as an example of the color, not necessarily the fabric.  This proved to be more difficult than I expected, but we persevered and kept walking around the store until we were just holding the swatch up hoping for anything to match.

At one point we'd picked a great fabric that had a beautiful sheen to it and even a slight luminescence to the fabric.  We decided to lay the fabric out on the table at the store to see watch the large pieces might look like as the dress came together.  We made a sad discovery.  The appealing feature of tonal luminescence rolled up on the bolt looked tacky unrolled in a length the dress would have to be.  It was clear with her height and size, we needed to choose a formal wear fabric that had a more matte finish.  However, at this point we had decided to skip the overskirt and create the gown as a plain dress.  In that deep maroon color, we agreed that the lace might look a little more like lingerie than a bridesmaid dress.  Besides, we couldn't find maroon lace, so the decision was pretty much already made for us.

So were back to the drawing board of choosing fabric.  Finally, we decided on a maroon that perfectly matched the swatch had a slight sheen to it.  We ended up finding some organza type material for an over skirt that we didn't think looked like lingerie.  Here is what we decided upon.