Bumps in the Road ...

What have I done lately?

(sigh ...)

School kinda interfered again, but the good news is my degree is so close I can almost smell the drying ink!

The bad news is that all of my sewing has been knit based, since it is fast and requires no interior finishing.

So my first adventure of the month was with New Look 6429, the ubiquitous faux knit wrap dress (it does bring Loes Hinse's Portofino to mind).


After throwing together a bodice muslin from cheapy, freeby poly; I realized I'd need to take a lot more out of the upper chest to prevent gapping. I have a shallow/concave chest and unadjusted wrap styles make me look like I'm: trying on Mommy's clothes or advertising, as NOTHING is left to the imagination.

As such, with my second full muslin I've taken out a total of 2 inches in darts from the upper neckline.

Now that the neckline has been adjusted, its time to look at everything else: length, gathering, and fullness.

I'm pretty small boned, so too much fabric can overwhelm me. I'd also like to save fabric, so I narrow the back/side skirt by about 6 inches total. Now I can get two skirt backs out of a doubled layer of fabric. This reduces the amount of flare in the skirt to something resembling more of an A-line than a circle skirt.

I need to add to the length of the skirt, as this dress is office bound and that means it should at least touch my knees. And my long torso puts the gathering directly underneath my chest, rather than at my tummy. So I spread the outer bodice to add more gathering and drop the gathering point by several inches.

So far, so good. Now I'm ready to cut into fashion fabric. Maybe that will be next week's adventure.



My next two trials are finished and drying at this moment.

OOP Vogue skirt and Kwik Sew 3384 (gaucho-like pants)

The Vogue has been sitting on Snowdrop's table for several weeks now, waiting for the 60 minutes or so that I would need to finish it (the pieces were: cut out, interfaced, elastic sewn, the works). It's an old Donna Karan 4 gore knit skirt that is just perfect for me. I was so proud of myself, now I've sewn and washed it.

The Kwik Sew was a bit trickier. I pulled out the pattern:


I've been wanting longer "gaucho" type pants: i.e. fuller. In my experience, close fit does not a comfortable summer make. So I've planned fuller knit pants that still look good for work but that feel comfortable. I've been picturing a knit Hepburn costume in my mind. So I tugged on and down my one lonely pair of gauchos to get a gander at hem width. My gauchos were 32" at the hem. No problem, looks great. Compare that to this pattern ... the pattern says the pant hem is 40" in the size Large, but it measures to 43". That's a big difference between my gauchos and this pattern.

So I set about figuring out how much to narrow the pant legs. My first muslin, I've removed 5" total from each leg. My results are clown pants, just too much fabric.

So for the second pair, I take a dart out of each piece the length of the pattern. As a result, I've pulled a total of 11" out of the hem circumference and feel as though I have accomplished my goal.

I'm wearing these tomorrow, as I've got an outdoor meeting at noon. Now for more fabric to make many more knit hepburn's.

:) I'm that much closer to a working wardrobe.