If you ask for an opinion...

...be prepared to hear the truth!

"Are you still working on your homework?" the Man of the House asked me. "Are you at least making a dress that you want to wear?"

I replied in the affirmative, and tried it on for him after I finished basting in the second sleeve.  

"The shoulders are really narrow.  It makes you look like a bell.  It's all out of balance."  

Ouch!  Not what I wanted to hear when (I thought) I was nearly done.  I ran from the room -- not in tears, as you might suspect, but to grab the pin cushion.  Maybe it was a bit too roomy in the hips.  So, since he had offered an opinion, I roped the Man into helping me fit the dress.

"But I don't know how to pin a dress!" he protested.  I grimly stuck a pin in his hand and told him to pin the back side seams where *he* thought they should be.  Well, that didn't work, not because he was so bad at pinning, but because that pulled the side seams to the back of my side.  So I ended up pinning the front side seams myself.  I took at least an inch out of both sides.

Chalk marks to mark the edge where I had it pinned.

I had to rip out two long seams and re-pin them.

The extra inch only came out of the side panel of fabric, not the front, which made lining up the seams a little more challenging.  

After stitching it up, and pinning it closed, and pinning on one of the buttons as an example, I tried it on again.    The Man gave it grudging approval, but hated the hemlength so much that he almost wouldn't look at it.  I tried to get him to help me pin that up (it's really hard to pin a hem while you are wearing the garment) but he was about as useful as a three-year-old who has decided he doesn't know how to put on his socks.  I already have one of those, so I had to take it off and pin it myself.  Miss A helped out with the photography. I think it's a little shorter than I would like it, but this is getting close.  Meanwhile, I decided I need to adjust one of the princess seams again above the bust, and ran out of steam in the middle of the afternoon.  

That was yesterday.  The middle of the afternoon, the Man of the House asked me if I was going to work on my dress, or if I was going to save it to work on at odd hours of the night as usual.  I told him I was taking a Sabbath rest!

But never fear, I still had plenty to do.  Miss A and Miss Z had lobbied for a trip to the fabric store -- Miss A was determined that I should make a dress for her.  She wanted a "silky fabric" and picked out a very large challis floral print.  I had no idea what I would make for a seven-year-old out of that fabric, but fortunately around the corner we found some sundress fabric with butterflies and flowers.  Perfect.  That only took one seam up the back and hem, but with Miss A learning to sew, we still had to do some ripping.  But, she also learned how to pin and to iron in the process, and did those admirably (though she managed to burn her hand and her elbow).  She has learned to set the iron down far, far away.  

Miss Z decided that she wanted to be a bee for Halloween.  Thus a bee tutu was in the works.  This was after finishing her fairy ribbon tutu.  At least these were no-sew projects!

One-sixteenth of an inch

Good thing I was too tired to sew those sleeves into the dress.  I ended up ripping them apart the next night. At least eleven times.  

I was having trouble getting the edges of the green band on the bottom of the sleeve to align at the seam.  They were only off a little bit -- one-sixteenth of an inch.  And no one would ever know, as the seam is under my arm.  But I would know.  And Dr. Simpson would know.  

I had asked her for tips on how to get the circumference of the sleeve hem that was turned under to match smoothly with the outer circumference of the sleeve, and she commented on the edges of the band not being lined up: "Your pattern probably didn't make a right angle there."

The bottom of a sleeve is just slightly curved, not a straight line, as the sides of the sleeve are tapered in toward the bottom.  I knew that when I had cut apart the pattern to add the band to the sleeve that I had copied in that curve.  I double-checked the pattern when I got home, and sure enough, the curve was there. However, for some reason I had not aligned the edges of the green and blue fabric exactly and had just sewn them straight across.  So I ripped off the band and sewed it back together, carefully, along the curve.  

The edges still didn't match -- they were off by one-sixteenth of an inch, and looked worse than before.  Now they made a bit of a vee and came to a point, to boot.  I ripped again, and carefully aligned, and stitched again.  Still off.  I carefully rolled the folded edge of the band along its mate on the other side and pinned it together.  Still off.  Rip!  I pin-stitched exactly along the stitching line.  No match.  Rip!  I basted it by hand.  No go.  Rip!  After about the fifth time, I got smart and finally sewed it together with a basting stitch, which made ripping a little bit faster.  

I finally thought carefully about what Dr. Simpson had said, that it wasn't making a right angle and I needed to adjust the pattern/stitching line.  Since there was a little too much green compared to the blue, I ripped apart to seam attaching the band to the bottom of the sleeve and misaligned the edges, taking out just one-sixteenth of an inch of the green.  I sewed it all back together.  It was much better, but I determined I needed to do the same thing on the other side of the sleeve. Rip!  Finally, I had a perfect match with 90-degree seams!  

Well, it's not really perfect -- now it's only off by one-thirty-secondth  of an inch.  But I'll just put in a small picture here and you'll never be able to tell.  Then I just had to do the same thing to the second sleeve.  I only ripped it out once. After I decided it was good enough and sewed over the basting stitch (double-rip!).  Hey, and all that ripping and re-sewing of the 7" seam only took me an hour and a half.   

Almost there....

I left off just needing to sew the side seams to get the dress to the point where I can take it to class for a fitting tomorrow.  As I start pinning it together, I realize that I sewed ALL FOUR POCKET PIECES to the wrong side of the fabric.  More ripping ensued.  At least these are rather short seams, and the pocket fronts are made from lining fabric and it is much easier to get the point of the ripper under the stitch without snagging the fabric.  

Finally I get it all together, and try it on.  With a few strategically placed pins to hold it together, it looks really nice.  And it fits!  Sorry there's no picture, but I can't take one of myself -- at least not easily.  With the last bit of energy I have, I put the bands on the sleeves (I told you I altered that pattern -- cut it into pieces, in fact) and then sew the sides.  

On one of the sleeves, the edges of the green band didn't align, so I RIPPED THAT SEAM OUT ... again.  My real problem with all this ripping is that I'm running out of thread!  I shouldn't have spun such a nice, fat bobbin to begin with.  

All this ripping and fussing reminds me of the sewing advice that has been handed down from generation to generation.  Great Meme said, "Don't take the style out when you put the stitches in."  Mom told me, "I'll make you the deal my mother (Grandmom) made me: I will rip for you, but you have to sew it right."  And Meme was the one who showed me how to turn a point, use a pin to pick out the fabric from the right side, and then use the handle of the scissors to pound the point flat so that it was nice and sharp.  

Anyway, I don't have the oomph to set sleeves into the dress, and I'd probably make a mistake which would have to be ripped out tomorrow... so I'm going to bed!

Fashion Fabric

The moment of truth has arrived.  I must cut into the fashion fabric.  Dr. Simpson has made that sound like a really big deal all semester, and now, even though I've cut out dozens of dresses over the years without a qualm, I'm a bit nervous.

Should I make a third muslin?  What if those final adjustments I made aren't quite right?  I may mess up my fashion fabric!  Not that I should get that upset about it -- I got it on sale and the fabric only cost me about thirty dollars.  That's not a great loss, but the two hundred and fifty dollars I spent on books and dress-making supplies (not to mention all the hours I've put in!) really gives me impetus to have this dress turn out well.

Once again I lay out the fabric and marked the seam allowances around the pattern directly on the fabric.  (Since I'm going to end up doing this four times before the lining is completed I really should have added the seam allowances on my pattern.  I noticed one of my classmates had just taped strips of paper 1/2" wide all around her patterns instead of retracing them and adding the seam allowance.  How brilliant!)

Umm, okay, I cheated just a little bit, and used a pattern I already had to make the sleeve and the pocket.  But I did alter the sleeve pattern!

Meanwhile I get distracted by the crazy ants swarming the ant bait -- we finally found the kind they like!

Notice the long legs on these critters.  These are the only ants I've ever known to "duck and cover" when you try to smash them.  Really, they do!  Then they all run around like crazy trying to find a place to hide.  

  

Okay, back to the job at hand.  After cutting out all the fabric  pieces, and then cutting out all of the interfacing, I was ready to begin.

I started with the collar swooshes, since those are the smallest pieces, and the most finicky detail on the dress.  The curves actually stitched in nicely, and after an hour I'm pretty happy with the result.  Then I realize that I didn't press the straight edge of the white piece so that the seam doesn't show.  I understitched the top seam so that it rolls perfectly, but forgot the short straight seam.  And I didn't clip the seams around the white point as well as I did on the green swoosh.   I contemplate just making the whole thing over (it's so small, and I have so much extra fabric) then think about the hour it took me.  I go to bed.

Saturday, I realize that I don't have to make the whole thing over, I can just rip out enough of the seam so that I can adjust the way the seamline falls.  Done.  I baste it onto the front of the bodice and the result is pretty nice.

That's when I realize I'm going to have trouble putting the facing in, because I have no way to connect the facing at the shoulder seam.  I'll solve that problem when I come to it.

I stitch the side pieces onto the front and back without incident.  Then I notice that none of the subtle stripes in the curved back princess seam match.  I had taken great pains to get the stripes to match on the shoulder, but hadn't worried about the princess seams because I knew that they wouldn't line up all the way around the curve.  The result really bothered me.  Maybe I'll do it all over in the morning.... I went to bed.

Before -- none of the stripes match.

Sunday after church, I rip out the side seams, carefully line up the pattern to the side back with the center back before cutting, and put it back together.  An hour later, I did have lines that matched!  Too bad the only line that matches perfectly is the one that will be inside the armhole seam allowance.  But I think the overall result is nicer

After -- that last stripe on the edge matches! 

Compare to the version above -- see any difference?

Horrible picture, I know.  I can sew, I can take pictures, or I can blog.  But doing all three simultaneously is really difficult.

So now I'm ready to stitch the front to the back at the shoulder seams.  Here's where I need to fix the facing on the right side.  I decide to put the shoulder seam in by hand, and then blind stitch the facing down over the seam. It looks pretty good, though some of the stitches show on the white part.  At least that's on the inside! :) 

"That looks cool!" said Miss Z.  "It looks like one of those handsome shirts."

"What is a handsome shirt?" I inquired.

"One that's short, that comes down to about here," she gestured about hip level, "and has buttons on the front."

Aha!  A men's sport coat!  Well, it is a coat dress, so that's not far off.

Next I stitch the pockets to the side seams, and just can't quite get up the steam to stitch up the side seams, so I go to bed! 

Creativity

This week we had a guest speaker, Dr. Mary Rupert-Stroescu, who gave a presentation on creativity.  Apparently, you can exercise and strengthen your creativity just like any other skill.  

She talked about two different types of creativity -- leadership creativity, which forges new paths and is exhibited in haute couture, and adaptive creativity, where there are many given restrictions that have to come together.  

I'm thinking that I use adaptive creativity a lot, but am lacking in leadership creativity.  But fear not, dear reader, there is a remedy for that!

Leadership creativity requires that one see, not just look; experience, not just feel; and synthesize, not just observe.  

One suggestion was to look at things which are very big (a planetary nebula, anyone?) and small things - like a neuron - for inspiration. She showed us a picture of a fuzzy caterpillar and had us design a shoe.  



Okay, probably no one would want to wear that.  Or, scarier yet, maybe someone would.  Maybe if they didn't know it was inspired by a caterpillar ...(Just google fuzzy caterpillar and see what images you get. Ugh.)

Another suggestion was to look at common or strange things.  

A picture of an iron railing on the side of a building in Paris was to inspire a purse:



And a picture of a car wrapped in pink plastic -- it looked like a giant wad of bubble gum with windows and wheels was to inspire another purse:

 Our last exercise was to listen to music and design a dress.  She played Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. 

Maybe.  I think I better stick with my day job, for now, 'cause the universe is just not ready for me to take over the world of fashion.  

Muslin Fitting

The muslin was awful, so I took it in to have my first fitting and figure out how to fix all the problems.  It did need a lot of changes -- like taking 1/2" out the entire length of the center back.  I also needed to take a new dart in the left side from the waist and shoulder seams -- which then had to be rotated back into the princess seams.  And I marked up the front to re-position all of the points and buttons.  

All told, I had about 1/2 a page of notes of changes.

You can see where I slashed the side front pattern to take in the dart from the waist here:

The dart from the shoulder was taken in the left side, as shown below.  (The second dart from the neckline was added after the second muslin fitting.) 

I decided not to take the horizontal tuck across the right center front, but instead to put in the same dart on the shoulder seam as I did on the left front side.  So I just made a mirror image of the left front, cut it on the center front line, and taped in place on the right front bodice.

After putting in a 1/2" seam up the center back, I was able to salvage the back half of the muslin and put it together with the two new front sides.  I spent most of Sunday afternoon fitting the muslin on myself and making adjustments.  Have you ever tried to pin a side seam right up underneath your armpit with one hand? This is not an easy feat.  I did have to call Chris in for that one.  

Miss A came in and really wanted to help me -- she desperately wants me to make a dress for her.  Help from a seven-year-old is not exactly what you want when you are trying to figure out how to adjust your pattern, but at least I had a good excuse for turning her down: I explained that I was making this dress for class and had to do all of the work myself.  Later I let her help by taking out pins after I stitched up a seam.  "I hope they don't mind that I took pins out for you," she said. But then she thought of a new project, so I had to take a time out to teach her how to crochet.  She decided to make a blanket, after crocheting a single chain thirty inches long. Alas, she has not mastered the triple crochet and I have to do all of those stitches for her.  Five triple crochets for me, three single crochets for her.  As Miss Z observed, we'll finish this blanket in 100 days.   

But, back to the muslin.  I finally got something that I liked reasonably well, after making all of these adjustments (plus taking in the side seams under the arms!):

Interestingly enough (or should I say, unsurprisingly), the adjustments I had to make at the shoulder seam were exactly the same adjustments Mom made on all of the dresses she made for me twenty years ago.  It appears that getting old did not alter my round shoulders.  So the shoulder seam had to be rolled forward 1/2" (shortening the shoulder depth in front, and then extended 5/16" to the outside of the shoulder.  

I took the muslin in to class on Tuesday, and it actually fit pretty well!  Just one more dart was needed do draw in the neckline.  Pretty good, since many of the other students had second muslins that fit worse than the first.  Of course, they didn't have the luxury of having their model standing around while they were sewing.  Not that I did, either, since my model was sitting at the sewing machine.  

You can see that the shape of the front bodice changed quite a bit during this process.  

After re-drawing the front pattern (again!) and tracing all of the changes from the muslin to the various pieces, and then tracing the front and back patterns yet one more time to make patterns for the facing and lining, I'm ready to start cutting out the "fashion fabric."  Another weekend of sewing awaits me!

The muslin

I spent the afternoon transferring my pattern to muslin, to check the fit.  Before I could begin, however, I had to clean up the craft room.  It's really nice to have a whole room dedicated to sewing and crafts, but the kids like to use it, to make crafts like this:

And they tend to leave it in disarray, with a floor covered in this:

That's after I gathered up all the papers and kicked them into a pile.  And uncovered the table top and washed off all of the paint. (All of the water soluble paint, that is.  I didn't take the time to scrub off the crayon.)

That left me with enough space to lay out all of the pattern pieces.  (Speaking of unfinished projects, that painting in the background was from the painting lesson Grandmom gave me before the twins were born.  It's been on the easel for eight years waiting to be finished.)

Each pattern piece had to have the seam allowances added: 1/2" on each seam, with the exception of 1/4" on the neckline, 1" on the side seams to allow for adjustments, and 1 1/2" in the bottom hem.  

This was the most tedious part of the project.  Lucky for me, at this point there are only five pattern pieces, with no facings or lining or pockets or sleeves.  

Just for good measure, I also used the tracing paper to transfer the seam lines and center front markings to the muslin.  

I must say, marking the lines directly on the muslin actually made it easier to cut out all of the pieces.  Except for the fact that I found my sewing scissors have a dull spot on the blades.  Could some of those kids have used them to cut something besides fabric?  

Now that all of the pieces are cut out, I was ready to stitch them together. Only six seams -- sounds pretty quick, right?  Well, it would have been if I didn't have five interruptions.  

I have found that you can never use too many pins when you are fitting the curve on princess seams.  Teeny tiny bites right on top of the line of ease stitching help it go in smoothly, too. 

Which gives a really nice, smooth seam after it is clipped and pressed.  Look, Ma, no tucks!   

Well, I've got to admit, the second seam was just terrible with the fabric pleated and stitched in all the wrong places.  Fortunately, I had sewn over the pins and I put the muslin together with a basting stitch, so it took mere moments to rip out that seam and stitch it again.  I think I forgot to hold the fabric into a curve while I was stitching. 

The back princess seams aren't as curved, and take fewer pins.  

Just the stitch the sides and shoulders together, and .... all done!  

Now comes the moment of truth.  

DOES IT FIT?



Do I have a picture here?




No!  It was awful.  And all of the places where it didn't fit were all of the reasons that I wanted to take this class.  It was way too big in the waist.  The shoulder seams were too high at the neck.  The princess seams in the back needed to be taken in to get rid of a lot of excess fabric.  The seams under the bust needed to be taken in, too, to give a better fit.  So, after using a red pencil to sketch in where I think the front curved pieces should fall, I packed everything up.  I really hope that I can get some help in class on Tuesday to solve all of these problems!

Design #2

Making just one dress is not enough work for a semester-long class!  Consequently, we had to turn in our first set of sketches for Design #2 this week.  Alas, the assignment was given on Thursday and I spent the weekend out of town at my nephew's birthday party. (My time was well-spent: I embroidered initials to help turn 50-cent washcloths into $6 Spidey-scrubbers. Even with just one large initial per cloth and an embroidery machine, getting forty washcloths into and out of an embroidery hoop took some time.) 

I completely forgot to work on the assignment on Monday, so I only have the sketches that I did in class on Tuesday while waiting for help to fit my muslin.

For this assignment, we were to take a vintage pattern and update it.  Here is my assigned inspiration pattern:


The keys points are the flange on the blouse, and the double darts in the skirt.  Here are the designs I turned out:




As you can see, anything with the bow looks rather dated, but a scarf at the neck works well.  (Oops!  Just realized I forgot to color one of the sleeves on dress 1.) I like the second and fourth designs the best.  The rest of this assignment is to make ten more sketches (variations on our best two or three designs from the original twenty) and then make these in half-size.  If the girls had a doll that size, I think I'd do it, but half-size is too big for a doll and too small for a little girl, so I may pass on this assignment!  

We also learned how to make the patterns for the facings and linings for our dresses in class this week.  So I'm actually not making more work for myself by deciding this should be a fully-lined dress. :)  The facing and lining pattern is just a copy of the dress pattern, with the facing being at least two inches wide on any open edge (neck, armholes of sleeveless dresses, button fronts, etc.).  In the back of the neck, however, the facing is made much deeper so that the finished garment has "hanger appeal" and doesn't show the lining.  After drawing in the shape of the facing, the pattern is cut apart, and then seam allowances are added to each piece.  Notice that the labeling for the facing pattern is on the opposite side of the paper from the pattern from which it's cut.  

Another interesting tip was not to stitch to the very end of the dart in the lining.

We used our very spiky "stiletto wheel" (that's a tracing wheel on steroids) to transfer the pattern to another piece of paper underneath.  



We also worked on button placement.  The extension for a buttoned garment should be equal to the radius of the button plus 1/4".  The top button is placed 1/4" plus the radius of the button below the neck edge, and another button is placed on the bust line.  The remaining buttons are spaced evenly between those two and the waistline.  

The buttonhole width is the diameter of the button plus the thickness of the button.  The edge of the buttonhole is placed 1/8" to the right of the center line.  

I actually have all of the pattern pieces made for my dress now.  This weekend I need to cut it out in muslin and baste it together.  I just have to remember to add the correct seam allowances to all those pattern pieces!  I'm going to cheat a little, too, and not make the facing and lining patterns until after I've fitted the muslin.  I hope we're not supposed to have the lining stitched in for our fitting!

The pattern

I did manage to get a pattern made for the bodice.  Figuring out exactly how to design the front and place the buttons took some doing.  The pattern ended up looking like this:

My next task was to turn that side dart into a princess seam and put the bodice together with the skirt to create a full dress pattern.  I got that done, too, but there's no picture because a) I finished at the very end of class (and then some) and had to pack up my stuff in a hurry to get back across campus, b) it's very hard for me to hold my phone up high enough to take a picture of the entire pattern lying flat, even on the floor and c) there were seven pattern pieces at this point, and you really didn't want to see all of those, did you? Maybe you did.  I'll try to get a picture of the finished product. 

All this time I'd been working with the basic sloper, which is a size 8 pattern.  I'm not a size 8 -- unfortunately.  After three pregnancies and four babies, my waist is too big and my bust is too small for a size 8.  At least my hips are the right size. :)  So I really needed to create my own personal sloper.  This entailed an extra couple of the steps that the rest of the class didn't have to do.  

 Following the directions in this book:

I took these measurements:

and drafted my personal sloper.  Note that this book is not so modern: the copyright is 1942.  It notes that you have to adjust your pattern measurements based on the current corset silhouette styles.  Gee, if I wore a corset, maybe I could squeeze into that size 8 sloper.  If the bust were padded.  In any case, Mom had noted my measurements in the chart some 20 years ago, and yes, I've changed shape quite a bit. And note that my measurements are really close to the 1940s size 16.  I could have purchased that antique pattern off the internet and used it! (And what does that tell you about the people today, given that a size 2 in the stores was a size 16 sixty years ago.)   Anyway, after following the directions to draft these two figures using my measurements

I created these slopers

which I then cut out in muslin to try on. 

Amazingly enough, the muslin fit!  I really didn't think that this would be possible, since I was taking all of my measurements myself.  Try to measure your full back bodice length while standing with normal posture.  How about the back shoulder width?  Some of these I just guessed on and went with the size 16 measurements as noted.  The only adjustments I ended up having to make were lowering the back armscye by 1/8" and letting out the back side seam 1/16 - 1/8".  

Now I just need to take this pattern, adjust it for princess seams, make the surplice front for left and right sides, and attach it to the skirt from my old pattern.  Easy peasy, right?

Oh, and then I have to make the facing and lining patterns.  More on that later.