So, 4 days-ish (since I’m only counting work days) of Me Made May and I’m seeing serious holes in my plan! I need more business-casual appropriate clothing, much more. 

I also really need to conquer pants fitting. I’ve made two pair in woven so far. The first pair “fits”, as in, yes, I can wear them, but “why, yes, they are home made” is quite an appropriate answer when asked the source. The pockets stick out, the crotch hangs low (which in pants #2 was intentional, since they were 40s styled)… 
I have quite a few patterns on my table right now, begging for a decision to be made on which is next-in-queue.   

  
I swear I do have pants patterns; they’re just so challenging for me (I have a big butt I cannot lie, LOL, in comparison to my waist) that they rarely come to the top of the list. I also have an unfinished 60s dress that didn’t quite work out, and now I need to learn how to do underarm gussets, but I think I’ll save that one for later. 

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The big news according to Scruff is – I’ve joined the Dark Side and bought a Mac. Hopefully, that means fewer issues! This is the inaugural Mac post…

SewNews magazine is hosting a sewalong of HotPatterns 1137, the Riviera Summer Breeze tie front sleeveless top.

Since it’s summer weather, and I had the pattern, I’ve joined. This is week two, and we’ve chosen our fabrics, decided whether to convert the top into a dress, and cut out all our pieces, as well as stitched one seam.

The reviews of this pattern indicate that’s it’s pretty straightforward to put together.  Having made a least a few tops (and many bodices, in the construction of dresses), I thought this would be a pretty simple sewalong! So far, it’s been more of a challenge than I expected, and I was already anticipating issues with with my fabric, since I usually use less slippery ones!

Some things for folks to consider when choosing this pattern:

• you need a really light, drapey fabric, but not sheer unless you plan to wear something under;
• there are several “join this piece” “to this piece” pattern pieces. Tip: the sheets are in order and connect to the next page, and it seemed to work best if the paper edges were abutted, not overlapped at all;
• the pattern pieces look really weird! You cut an entire front, that is very oddly shaped because there will be gathers in what ends up being a dart on one side, and then you cut the drapey part that goes over, which looks like a diagonal half of a bodice, instead of the more standard vertical half. So expect to look at this one a while if you have any fitting adjustments to make; and
• speaking of fitting adjustments, in an attempt to get my me-made garments better fitted to me, I did a lot of futzing with this oddly shaped pattern. I won’t know til later whether my adjustments were effective.

The fabric:

A poly “hammered satin” charmeuse from my stash

A poly “hammered charmeuse” from my stash. My adjusted pieces are all cut out and awaiting the next task.

In the meantime, a sneak peek at another project I’ll be sewing at the same time (not literally, Scruff, and my fingers usually make it without being sewn together too):

100% cotton seersucker

Plain & Simple Fitted T Redux

Decided to try making a t-shirt for the first time. I considered a nice knit fabric with some sheer stripes that I love, but ended up using a cheap knit from the G St discount table – no matter, it still looks great for a first try knit top! Love this pattern!

As for the instructions, I had to guess which sleeve went to which side as they are not labeled, and the diagrams did not say. Since the sleeve pieces are not front-to-back symmetrical, these really could be in wrong, but my fabric was very forgiving.

The one additional item I should mention is that the sleeve is snug at the elbow, so if you have any forearm muscle at all – measure and adjust!

It has an interesting back seam to help give it a bit of shape:

And the front view:

Finished the dress in time for the party! It was my best invisible zip ever so I was pretty happy about that. Making the normal adjustments though, left it just a little roomy in the tush – perhaps because this was labeled plus size, and I was on the low end of the pattern sheet, vs regular, where I’m near the largest size, had something to do with it. It wasn’t enough for me to re-do anything over, but thankfully I did pay attention to sizing early enough to take out four inches at the waist, by curving the side seams just a little more (I find this unusual for a Burda for me). That would have been significant enough that I would have considered wearing something else!

For the rank beginners, if you’re used to folding darts… this pattern has you cut it in, but doesn’t tell you until several steps in, so definitely read ahead.

I took the sleeve pattern from the jacket, trimmed and inch down either side, and shortened to elbow length. It eased into the dress armscye quite well and came out just the way I wanted!

This was taken after the party… hopefully my exhaustion isn’t too obvious, but I forgot to get a photo before we left!