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!