Not Like a Traffic Cone

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.-– Johannes Brahms.

I've been trying to commit to improving my sewing skills recently. I've been fooling myself for years that my high school-based knowledge of sewing is enough to create the wardrobe of my dreams, but the reality is that I have a lot to learn when it comes to that kind of garment creation. I also have a stash of fabric that I've been collecting that is currently taking over my spare room closet that deserves to be used somehow.

I recently blogged about my Seamwork membership which I have been using to collect patterns I would like to attempt. I've also been learning a lot from their videos and articles. I decided to use one of their patterns to try to make a dress out of this lovely fabric I picked up recently:

The pattern was a "beginner" pattern which was a two-tone shift dress with cap sleeves called Georgia. I read through the instructions and selected the size to make based on my measurements.

This is really where it started to go all wrong.

I've been making knitted and crocheted garments for years, and I know that process like the back of my hand. I have enough humility to recognize that making a garment from woven fabric is not my forte, but I was a little surprised to see that this pattern had between 5 to 7 inches of positive ease. "Hmm, that sounds like a lot," I said.

"Ease" is the amount of extra space a garment has. If a garment has positive ease, it means that the measurements of the final garment will be larger than your actual measurements. I usually build in about 2 inches of positive ease into my knitted garments but given than knitted garments are stretchy and more forgiving, I wondered if all of that extra ease was necessary to get the dress over my head. There was no zipper built into the pattern. I decided to put myself at the mercy of the dress pattern and just go with it.

I cut the pieces, sewed up the shoulders, and sewed down each side of the bodice. That was easy enough. And then I tried it on.

I looked like a traffic cone. Seriously. If I knelt down, you could build a roundabout around me.

It took all of my resolve not to throw the whole thing out. My Type A personality does not enjoy being bad at things. I very calmly stood in front of the mirror and wondered what the heck I could do to salvage this thing.

I do not know everything there is to know about sewing, but I do know how to make things fit. I compared this dress to others that I owned and tried to understand what it was I disliked so much about this one. I took measurements, tried on loads of other clothes, stood in front of the mirror pinching, pleating, pinning, waiting for the moment when this dress would start to look like something I would want to wear. 

I spent some time on Instagram looking a other people's finished projects and came across one that used fish eye darts to bring the waist in. So I looked up how to do that and got down to work:

I took my time with it, pinning before cutting, trying it on over and over again, waiting a day in between each step to make sure I wasn't rushing it. You can see there are two sets of diamonds on that fabric. That's because I needed to make the darts wider to take it in more. I also decided to reduce the sweep of the skirt by 6 inches, which made it slightly more fitted and less traffic coney.

It was better, but it was still not all that flattering. What I needed to do was to find a way to cinch in the waist a bit more that would still allow me to slip the whole dress over my head without the need for a zipper.

I pondered that for an evening and decided I would try to sew elastic into the back of the waist to draw it in. I watched a few videos and read a few tutorials and practiced the move over and over again in my head. And then I tried it...

And found I'd sewn the entire waist together in the middle. Sigh. Ask me how much practice I've had ripping out stitches.

After the second attempt, much to my surprise, it worked perfectly.

And here is my dress:

The thing that I was most nervous about sewing was the set-in sleeves. It required a skill I'd never seen before and I was pretty sure I'd screw it up. Oddly, the sleeves went in on the first attempt, which I feel pretty proud of,

So after that two-week-long experience, I think it's time for me to take a break and go back to do some knitting for a while. I need the reassurance of something I know really well to give me a bit of a boost.

Oh, and speaking of knitting, in between all of this sewing, I did finally finish my knitted tee, but I'll save that to share with you for next week. I have to have SOMETHING to share next week...

I'm off for tea and a nap. Have a good week!