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!