I Really Didn't Think That Would Work

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.—Thomas Szasz

A couple of weeks ago, Fabricland had its annual Dollar Days sale. I figured it would be a good time to stock up on lining fabric and a few other staples. That line of thinking never works, of course, and I ended up coming home with a few pretty goodies to play with.

One of those goodies was this cute red floral pattern fabric. It's adorable, no? And it was also on sale. I was fresh from making my other dress and was feeling more confident about how to make things fit and how much fabric to buy:

Around the same time, Seamwork released a new pattern called Chantelle, which is a mini shirt dress. What sold me on it was its bonus version which included a lace-up back. Given that I'm still figuring out how to make things fit well, I was attracted to this feature as it allowed me to draw the dress in at the back without me having to mess around with darts and elastics.

I've learned from my last few forays into dressmaking that a lot of women's patterns don't really fit me all that well as they're designed for bodies that aren't much like mine. My shoulders are broad, but my hips are not, and therefore a lot of dress patterns end up swamping around my hips or standing out like a traffic cone around my waist. Neither of those looks are what I'm going for these days, so I've learned to look at the fitting chart and at the finished dimensions to compare them with my own measurements. And I've been experimenting with "grading" a pattern, that is, to start with a certain size but increase or decrease some of the measurements to a different size. I've noticed that I can often grade the hip area to two sizes down from the original one. After comparing the size chart for this pattern, that's exactly what I did.

I was feeling confident... but you know how the gods feel about confidence. They'll strike you down in a moment.

I had reached the point where I had sewn the left and right front parts to the back, so I stood up and tried it on to see how it fit. 

The fronts would not close around my bust. What? Huh? What?

I was annoyed. I was embarrassed. I was annoyed again. What did I do wrong?

I spent the next ten minutes measuring myself over and over again and concluded that I must have cut out the wrong size. How did I do that? I was so careful.

I decided there was nothing for but to continue on and chalk the whole thing up to a learning experience. You can't get better at something unless you force yourself to do it over and over and over again... even if you're annoyed by the whole experience.

So, I finished it. I made the buttonholes. I sewed on the buttons. It looked pretty cute:

And then I tried it on. And wow. It fits perfectly.

I don't really know what happened. Maybe when I tried it on I was having a weird "big bust" day. Or maybe it was angled weirdly on my shoulders. Or maybe some elves came along and fixed it for me. Who knows?

I am also quite happy with how the lace-up back is working out. It's a great little feature.

So there ya go. Apparently, I know how to sew a decent dress now. I won't check it off my "things I know how to do list" until I make at least a couple more, but I'm feeling a lot better about the whole process now. Yay me.

In the meantime, I've decided it's time for me to go back to knitting for a wee while. I've got an experiment in the works (