Shirred Success

Here's the final top on me. Yes, I'm still wearing my new jeans. I'm never taking them off. I wore them half of Thursday and all day yesterday and they didn't stretch/bag out a bit. See. Best Jeans Ever. (Thank you all so much for the nice comments!)

Anyway, the shirred Burda top is done. You can read the full review here, but the short of it is I ended up taking the entire thing apart, cutting a whole new front, modifying the back, and cutting new sleeves. I thought when I first pulled this fabric out of the stash that it would be OK if I had to sacrifice it to a wadder. But the more I looked at it and tried on the ill-fitting version, the more I decided that I wanted to keep it if possible.

During the week I worked in spurts with unstitching and evaluating the fit issues. Because I did it in small increments of time, it didn't feel tedious or annoying. Which is good, because now I have a top that I'll wear a lot.

I released each end of the shirring to see how that affected the armhole curve. It really didn't affect it at all. The problem was the shape of the pattern, not the shirring. So I used my TNT Ottobre tee front armhole shape/width to modify the Burda pattern. That fix, new sleeves and a modified back which fixed the too-far forward shoulder seam and batwings problems was what I needed.

I'll keep this pattern and make it again. Well, actually, I'm only keeping the front pattern piece. I've marked on it in big red lettering to use the Ottobre back and sleeve pieces with it.

Oh, and don't be surprised if you see shirring show up again something else I make, because I really liked doing it and how it turns out. (Hi Angie!)


Parting Shots:

I've mentioned that Dani has been enjoying nibbling on my comforters, right? Well, a few weeks ago I noticed that it was Too Quiet downstairs. Like when you have young human children and you just know that something bad is happening. I went upstairs to find Dani and Chili in the center of my bed, surrounded by clouds of fluff. DH had forgotten the rule of last person up immediately makes the bed or else. Well, "or else" happened and that comforter was now beyond repair. It's one thing to patch the edges. Another thing entirely when the center has been shredded and defluffed. Ahem. Bad (giggle, giggle) Dogs! Bad (snicker, snicker) Dogs! You should have seen their you-know-what eating grins when I found them.

So I took the main comforter off the bed and dragged it into the sewing room to evaluate what I could do until we replaced it. While I was doing that, the dogs decided that the bottom comforter was now fair game too. Grrrr! The bottom-layer comforter is now waiting in my sewing room since I have plans to cut it up, serge the edges and make doggy nap pads. Except, well, they beat me to it. The napping part anyway.



A new bottom comforter and a top quilt were purchased and put on the bed. Here are the "Bad Dogs" on the new bed stuff with DS. And I know, it's only a matter of time.