I started Monday morning with the green shirt. There was nothing technically wrong with it - it was just way too big so I figured that should be an easy fix - right???? wrong. 5 hours of sewing later I finally ended up with a finished project. Its not fantastic, but its a wearable shirt so I'm happy.
So how did I do it. I started by taking my sloper pattern and extending it down to shirt length. This is where I encountered my first problem. Figuring out how to take the dart out of the pattern. I'm not 100% sure I did it right, but it seems to work. I originally left the armhole as per the pattern and then pivoted the pattern around the dart point to figure out the new side seam, but this created too much length between the armhole and the waist, so in the end I kept the front line of the pattern in place and pivoted around the dart point, essentially elongating the armhole to account for the extra fabric required for my bust. This seemed to work.
I then took the green shirt apart, laid it all out flat again and laid the new pattern pieces over them.
As I expected the arm hole was much too far out, and the sides of the top were a good 1-2 inches off too wide too, and that's without taking the negative ease that this fabric needs into account. To account for the stretch of the fabric I moved the pattern over towards the center 1/2 in (essentially taking 1" fabric out of the center and back of the top), then re-cut the fabric to the sloper pattern.
I was then ready to start sewing. Since I wasn't entirely sure how the pattern would work I sewed the whole thing together using the basting stitch to start with, and I'm glad I did, as I had to take it apart and make adjustments a few more times before I was happy, but finally I said OK, took the whole thing apart one last time and sewed it together using the correct stitches. As I said 5 hours later I had a top that I could probably buy in a store for $15, nothing special,
I will admit here and now that my finishing on this top is not the greatest, by the time I got to the finishing stages I was so over it and just wanted it done.
One thing that I did do however, which I have never tried before, was add some tape along the shoulder seams to stop the top from stretching out.
Unfortunately I didn't think about doing this till the top was finished so it's a bit tacked on, it also means that the shoulders no longer sit beautifully flat when I'm wearing it. But despite everything I have now been wearing this shirt for the last two days straight (hence the stain in the middle of the shirt already, please excuse that). It's beautifully comfortable, warm and snuggly so I'm happy.
On Tuesday I decided to tackle the orange shirt/dress. This went a lot more smoothly thankfully. I decided straight off the bat that I didn't like it as a dress, and it'd probably never get worn as a dress so my first action was to chop 16 inches off the bottom.
I then added a facing around the neckline. This is where I spent most of my time and I was trying to decide whether to leave the neckline plain, or if I wanted to do something fancy. I played around with adding a small draped cowl, piping etc, but in the end went with the plain facing. I sewed the facing on, turned it over and top stitched it down and I still wasn't overly happy, so I went back with my twin needle and added a line of double stitches about 1.5 inches away from the neckline and this finished it beautifully.
After finishing the neckline I started looking at the bottom of the shirt. again I played around with a couple of different options. first I tried leaving it tunic length and leaving a split up with sides, and even doing a high low hem, but in the end I decided on ruching the two side seams creating a nice curve around the front and back.
Last but not least was the grey and white top. After going out and buying a new underlay fabric, this time with stretch, I decided I wanted to give the shirt one last go with the original two materials. I re-sewed the front and back together with both fabrics, using 1/4" seam allowance rather than the 5/8in (again using a basting stitch so I could easily rescue it if it didn't work). I tried it on and it seemed to fit fine, wasn't too constricting, so I went and added in one sleeve (I used the 1/4" seam allowance to sew the sleeve together, but the full 5/8" to sew the sleeve into the top). Again it seemed to be fine with that little bit of extra wiggle room, so I tried the final sleeve as well. Yep - it works. Unfortunately I then had to go and take it all apart again so I could sew it up properly using the right stitches.
And last of all came the band around the bottom. Again I used the grey knit fabric to line my grey and white stripes. When I tried it on it was too long, right down past my bum, so I had to take the band off, cut a good 3" off the bottom and reattach. a good thing I was still basting on first before doing the final sew.
I was happy that I managed to get most of my stripes to line up pretty well, Its a bit off near the top of the shoulder, but everywhere else was pretty good.
Realistically the amount of time it took me to sew this shirt was very short, but since I basted and tried on after every single seam it ended up taking quite some time to finish. The final product is probably more sweater than shirt, but that's OK, just this morning my 6 year old son asked why I wore my purple sweater every single day and I realsied that yes I really only have one around the house day to day sweater, so at least now I have two.
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