Category Archives: Style 3653
March – where did you go?
March sort of ran away from me and now it is April 😦
unfortunately a combination of training course (getting up 2 hours earlier) and having work done on the house has removed most of my stitching time for March and looks to be taking over April as well.
I have a couple of part way projects I can show you but nothing finished.
The first project is view 2
I think this is the first time I have ever done all views of a pattern, this is going to have a better fit, fingers crossed than the other two versions, these I took extra fabric from the side seams this time I have shrunk the pattern and done a small bust adjustment.
The top half of the pattern is one size too big but the waist and hips are perfect, so I turned to my trusty printer and scanned the front and back bodice pieces then I printed them out at 95%, you can just see on the bottom of the two photos how much I lost, it was about 1/4 inch all round. Then for the SBA there were a few things I needed to do
the first thing I had to do was reinstate the 5/8 seam allowance, then decide where I was going to move the bust dart to on the side.
I closed up the underbust dart and moved it to the side
added a piece of paper to the now side dart.
I then cut up from where the original dart had been to bust point then across to the arm hole, and swung that piece over 1/2 inch, taping the top part down
you can see from the above photo that the centre seam part which hasn’t been changed is now longer than the side seem which has been changed, so you slice across from the middle and shift the centre piece up until it matches the side piece, because the chest is smaller than expected for the pattern there is too much fabric going over the bust and this removes it.
The last step is to move the side dart back to the under bust, slice up the middle of the added paper and the area where the underbust dart was and close up the side dart creating a new smaller dart, add a piece of paper under this to fill in the new dart.
as you can see by the drawn in seam allowance (pencil) this dart is far smaller than the original, all that left to do is to make up a bodice and check the fit.
for a full length bodice it is better to add a skirt to check this, but as all I needed to do was to check the fit around the bust I left it at this.
more hopefully soon
February Projects
We have another bonus project coming up, I changed the fabric I decided on for the sewoverit shirt dress, after cutting it out I had enough left over to cut view 3 shorts and a halter neck top.
I did make a test version on the shorts which fitted perfectly. The shorts though straightforward has no waistband, it has grosgrain ribbon instead, this was as fiddly as putting the elastic in the moneta dress.
Those little folds at the seams were very hard to keep in place as you stitched them down then you fold them over and stitch in place, you then tack them to the seam allowance I’m assuming it is to give a better fit as it will expand over the hips.
I used bias binding on the hems as instructed by the pattern which does give a nice clean finish as you can in the photo above I used my overlocker on the seams.
I removed 1/2 inch from the side seams and shifted the strap over slightly, once the top had been put together I had to remove a further 1/2 inch if I make this again I will have to reduce across the top pattern.
Here is a picture of the outfit with buttons
More soon
Project 4 – January
This is probably the item that is going to cause me the most problems, but to be fair it is going to be my own fault.
For Project 4 I’m going to take this dress
And turn it into  this dress
The original dress fitted fine as long as I didn’t want to move my arms or anything practical like that.
I had two attempts at making the top half of the dress, which gave me enough to do the main bit of the front bodice, I needed to do some pattern matching for the straps, I am very please with the result.
I needed to do a bit of patching on the front skirt pieces, luckily it was where it folded under to make the button tab that was short otherwise i would have had to found another plan for the fabric.
I probably should have sized down the top as I needed to take and extra 1/2 inch off the side seems and bring the front seam in an extra 1/4 inch, Â I’m thinking I might make the shorter version with the shorts and the halter neck so watch this space.
The dress came together very easily and if I had started with a length of fabric, it would only have taken a couple of hour to put together.
I wasn’t sure about its double buttons but I think they look alright you do need the hook and eye at the seam otherwise it gapes.
more later
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 