Saturday, June 2, 2007

Morphing Along

The Tropical Storm (Barry) in the Gulf has been dumping rain on us since yesterday morning, and it's turned me into a slug. I seem to be moving at half pace. Unlike Carolyn, who is on vacation from work and has been churning out the outfits at 10 times my normal speed.

I did manage to tape my pattern together, cut it out and then cut out my fabric so that's some progress. While taping the pattern sheets together, I decided I didn't like the scale of my sleeve inset as well as the original, and then I compared the armhole seamline lengths between the two. Very, very close. So I made the executive decision to toss mine and use the original pieces. This sleeve detail is the reason I liked the pattern after all, so this makes perfect sense, right?

The muslin sleeve felt a little tight so I added about 5/8" more width to the pattern and I've decided to leave out the interfacing in the band, which at the time I wasn't sure was called for or not in the instructions since they're in German and all I had to go by was the sketch ... which could've been indicating wrong side or interfacing. I did recognize "Vilieseline" as interfacing in the instructions so I decided to interface the shaded areas of the layout since I had no real idea what was being instructed. It was Guess Your Best and I guessed wrong. ;-)

Since then, Katharine very kindly translated her French version of the instructions into English for me. I see a few discrepancies between what I did and the instructions, but nothing extremely glaring. And I also see the sizes Katharine lists are different than the German version. Katherine's copy lists the sizes as 40/42, 44/46, 48/50 and my German copy lists them as 38/40, 42/44, 46/48. Interesting. Katherine also confirmed the dart for me. Apparently it is added to just the largest size for additional shaping, which tells me that I was correct when I decided the larger sizes are drafted for a larger bra cup size too. That's a Good Thing for me. And she confirmed the back facing piece. I still haven't gone back to figure out whether I traced it wrong or the pieces just don't match. The pattern sheet is folded back up and my table isn't clear enough yet to get it back out.

Here's a comparison of the Diana pattern laid over my TNT software pattern. The Diana pattern is wider at the shoulders and upper chest, which I knew from my muslin. As I was expecting, the Diana is also narrower at the hips and waist. The Diana armhole is a lower than my pattern, especially at the back. I like high armholes, which is one reason I always seem to crawl back to my TNT pattern. It just plain fits the way I like and it's just not that hard to morph elements from other patterns onto or into it. The overall lengths between the two patterns are about equal, but since I always cut with lots of extra just-in-case length, my pattern looks a lot longer. In reality, I cut most of that off when cutting my fabric.



This is the original Diana sleeve and band after I added width, and my new neckband pieces.



The sun is starting to peek out so we're off to the dog park for a while to burn off some of the energy of 3 dogs mostly cooped up inside for a couple of days. I'm hoping to get back into the sewing room later this afternoon to start sewing this new tee.

BTW, I made lasagne for dinner last night and found out that leftover uncooked pieces of the lasagne pasta make really great crunchy dog treats. They LOVE that stuff!

4 comments:

  1. Debbie - I think the reason that I was so productive this week is because I had a limited time to accomplish something...and I still didn't do as much as I wanted! But thanks for the compliment, it is appreciated!

    And you accomplish so much everyday with your home remodeling projects as well as sewing, raising children and your dogs. You do so much that my head spins some times! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Debbie,
    I often read your blog and admire your work. Especially I like your fitting tutorials.

    Now I read, that you work on a Diana pattern and as I come from Germany I want to offer you, to ask me if you want something to know about the instructions.
    Perhaps my translation will contain some minor grammar mistakes ;-), but I think I will be able to translate all the sewing related terms correctly as I mostly use english sewing literature.

    By the way, "Vlieseline" is the name for all types of interfacing that are produced by the german company "Freudenberg". That means, "Vlieseline" can be a fusible or a non fusible interfacing and a woven or nonwoven interfacing. The exact type of interfacing is defined by an alphanumeric identifier, e.g. Vlieseline G785 which is a leightweigth woven fusible interfacing.

    The difference in sizing between the German and the French issue comes from the different names for the same sizes in these both countries. A german size 38 corresponds to a french size 40.
    Hope, I could help you a little bit.
    Greetings from Germany
    Barbara

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Deb, the sizes are the same. Diana is printing the same pattern sheet for everyone. France is known for having its own sizing charts--seriously! That's the diff. All RTW clothes tags have two sizes listed: EU and FR, if they're bras than UK too (the 36-38-etc. Imperial measurements). If I had a Dutch version they'd be called the same sizes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yum - lasagne - I haven't made that for a while, might be a good Sunday dinner tomorrow! Glad you're getting rain, hoping it's coming this way tomorrow so maybe I can get some sewing done!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for each and every comment. I appreciate them all, but I have to be honest and let you know that I'm usually bad about answering questions. I hope you understand that there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything I want to do.

To help keep spam comments under control, any comments to blog posts that are more than 30 days old are moderated and will not show up immediately.