A Wearable Muslin

I have a love/hate relationship with muslins. Yes, I think they are necessary and more helpful than not. They save the "good fabric" from potential disaster, and let you test out fit and techniques. Those are the parts I love. What I hate is wasting all that prime sewing time on a wadder, because if you use true muslin fabric, it will end up in the bin. So I usually compromise with potentially wearable muslins sewn from the more-aged/less-loved fabrics in the stash. But ... this means (a) I may end up with two of the very same garment when I really only wanted one and (b) I may be tired of the pattern by the time I finish the tester and the "good fabric" version, the one I really wanted but had to test first, never gets made.

Last night I finished cutting out the blouse-in-progress (#109 from the July Burda WOF). This afternoon I've been sewing it together off and on around other household stuff going on. The photo at the top is how it looks at this very moment. I stopped because of that love/hate thing.

I forgot that I wanted to add about 1.25" to the bottom piece so the blouse will hit a more flattering spot on me. To fix my mistake means I have to rip out those bottom pieces, recut 3 new pieces (2 front, 1 back) and re-sew the front. Here's my dilemma. I don't really love this fabric. It's plain semi-cheap cotton from Joann's. It's not really *my* colors or style but it's OK. If I don't make it longer, chances are I will never wear it but it will serve a purpose in testing fit and style. If I do fix it, I probably will wear it. But it still won't be loved — and never a Holy Grail — because I don't love the fabric. So how much will I really wear it?

Switching gears a moment — I took a photo in progress to see if I liked the topstitching I added. The Burda instructions have you topstitch the dart and the lower seam on middle piece where it joins the bottom piece but you are not supposed to topstitch the underbust seam. Well, I like the underbust seam and want to emphasize it and the line it creates on me. I topstitched one side and not the other, took a pic to compare and ... you can't really see the difference because of the print!

Here's the two sides. The one on your right is topstitched. Yeah, I know. You can't tell.


Here's a close-up where you can see the topstitching better. If you squint. But in a solid, I know I'll prefer it so that's what I'm going to do.


Back to the length ... I have cut out new pieces and because I'm quite anal, I'll most likely fix it. OK, I already know I'll fix it otherwise I wouldn't have cut out the new pieces. Thankfully, I hadn't yet overlocked the seam allowances on these pieces so ripping out will be easy. In fact, if I had just done it instead of writing about it, I'd be finished by now!