A dress failure

You may remember that I bought drape drape 2 the other day and was pretty keen to make the stripey mini drape dress from the book using fabric my sister had given me back in September to round off the 'It's all about me November sewing'.  After all tomorrow is December and it will be all about presents and parties and a whole log of rushing around without much time for selfish sewing.   Well I made the dress and yes, it has fantastic potential as a pattern, but unfortunately the dress I made just is not right.
The fit is o - k- but because the material wasn't wide enough to fit the full pattern, I just left a whole middle panel of the pattern out.  Yep, just like that. I didn't bother with the middle section when I posted the pattern pieces together.  So, yes it fits, but it is a bit hard to sit down.

The real probem is not the fit, but the way I've sewn it.  The pattern calls for binding around the neck and armholes but I freaked out not knowing what to do given the material I was sewing.  I probably should have just bought a plain jersey, but instead panicked about the texture in the material and decided I was just going to overlock and turn and hem.  Well the result isn't pretty.  I wonder whether I should have just rolled hem the whole thing. ??!   Stretchy material really does baffle me.

So, here is a photo of me wearing it.  You can see the neck isn't right. Oh well. Might try with other material.

KCWC Days 5 and 6

A bit of sewing here and a bit of sewing there

After feeling less than satisfied with the way KCWC was panning out on Day 4, I found a bit of mojo and actually started to enjoy myself on Day 5 and 6.  As you will see there are some ups and downs with the sewing but the main thing for me was that it became less of a chore!

So first up a fun failure!

I bought this Marc Jacobs tshirt 6 years ago from ebay.  I adored the fabric and the style but to be honest it was always a bit too big and the fabric was starting to wear.  So I took to it with scissors to make a top for Elliot.
Strangely, when you see the half finished failure below, I had a lot of fun while attempting to make this top  (based on the flashback skinny tee pattern).  This was my first go at up cycling a piece of clothing and it was actually fun to work out where I might put the different parts of the original tshirt.   The funniest bit is the pocket at the front which was actually the back of the shirt. I kept the tag in it just to be reminded of it's origin.  The material is so soft that Elliot put it on and called it his 'warm up tshirt'.  It might have something to do with the super tight sleeves..

So yes, I did have problems by the number:
The sleeves are super skinny and so I now realise if I'm making a short sleeve tshirt I need to adjust the pattern a bit.
I didn't have enough fabric in the body so when Elliot tried it on it was a bit like a midriff top.
And obviously things went all wrong with the neck (my inexperience with knits is showing through and I now realise that the neck piece should have been much shorter...doh... can you believe I actually added fabric to the neck thinking I had cut it wrong??!!).  Anyway off to the trash with it unless I can thing of something else to do with it....maybe a pair of baby legs???

Now to my work in progress..  Realising that the problem I was having with KCWC was my lack of interest in the materials I was working with (booooring) I pulled out some left over drill from costumes I've made and told Elliot to choose the colours he wanted for a pair of shorts. So this is what he chose!

Dennis Lillee 

I should finish KCWC with a bang as these are almost done.

The really scary thing is that somewhere in my subconscious they have ended up taking the form of a pair of coloured Australian cricket pants from 70s-80s world series cricket right down to the green pocket.  This is unintentional.  Really!
At least the waist band will be blue???!  Don't worry, I won't be making a matching top or matching Dennis Lillee moustache or maybe....

saturday sewing disasters

This afternoon Oliver had a friend come over for a play, which meant I had a bit of time to do some sewing. I've been feeling a bit of 'me made' pressure to make something other than a blouse and so I decided that, after seeing so many ginger skirts in Me Made May 2012, I would try one for myself.  Off I went to Addicted to Fabric and picked up items that are new, strange and a bit daunting to me: an invisible zipper, a pattern in English and fusible lining!  My mistake was to not buy new fabric as I thought I'd up some material from the stash - a wool fabric which has been sitting around for ever. The liberty rolls were calling to me to make another blouse, but I was strong and resisted... for now.  With my never opened invisible zipper foot, my set of instructions and a few you tube videos on the go, I managed to sew the invisible zipper on and was pretty proud of myself - but alas, with the interfacing (which I wonder in hindsight whether I needed at all) it all turned out too bulky, so on snipping the edges, I snipped too much.  I tried to rectify by doing all sorts of random sewing in all sorts of random places, only to have the zipper not do up half way, so after removing loose threads from left and right decided to give it a good yank - to which the zipper responded by unhooking itself from the teeth.  Look, I'm sure it's probably possible to put the zipper back on the teeth - but I'm over it.  The skirt, which was probably never really me has been shoved down back in the stash.  Perhaps I should stick with what I'm good at and make another top tomorrow - or just do my French homework which was what I should have been doing today.