Review with more pics, here.
And I still have no voice, and tomorrow it will be a week. This is very annoying. Unless you're my sons or husband. ;-)
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Blouse Done
Review with more pics, here.
And I still have no voice, and tomorrow it will be a week. This is very annoying. Unless you're my sons or husband. ;-)
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Fast Update
The blouse is done and it's a keeper. I'm hoping to take pics and write up a review tomorrow or Tuesday.
I spent Thursday night, Friday night and all day Saturday at a seminar my company put on. That would be fine, except I had no voice. And I mean NO VOICE. I had a cold last week and only felt bad the first day of it and then days later out of the blue, I lost my voice. Not the best situation when one is dealing with hoards of people asking questions. But except for the voice thing, I actually felt perfectly fine.
Until today. It all caught up with me I suppose. I forced myself to finish the blouse this afternoon and then as much as I wanted to use the rest of the day to do something else productive in the sewing room, I just couldn't muster any motivation to do anything more than look at some patterns in the on-deck pile. I know I'm running a low-grade temp so any energy is gone. Ugh. And I still have no voice.
Hopefully this will pass quickly.
I spent Thursday night, Friday night and all day Saturday at a seminar my company put on. That would be fine, except I had no voice. And I mean NO VOICE. I had a cold last week and only felt bad the first day of it and then days later out of the blue, I lost my voice. Not the best situation when one is dealing with hoards of people asking questions. But except for the voice thing, I actually felt perfectly fine.
Until today. It all caught up with me I suppose. I forced myself to finish the blouse this afternoon and then as much as I wanted to use the rest of the day to do something else productive in the sewing room, I just couldn't muster any motivation to do anything more than look at some patterns in the on-deck pile. I know I'm running a low-grade temp so any energy is gone. Ugh. And I still have no voice.
Hopefully this will pass quickly.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Getting There
OK, I swear I'm buying a new camera with my next paycheck. Grrr. I can never get a non-fuzzy photo anymore. It can't be me, right? ;-)
So, here is where the blouse is tonight. Hems and buttons/buttonholes and I should be able to call it done. Except …
The front waist darts are bugging me. I really think I need to move them further toward the sideseams. You can't see them in the photo but trust me. They are not centered under the apex and they should be. I suppose ripping and resewing a couple of darts I should've pin-tested anyway is a small price to pay for not needing an FBA with this pattern.
The sleeves are also only just OK. They're fine now, but I'm still flashing back to setting them into the armholes. For the next version, I need to remove some cap ease. These were a BEAR and shouldn't have been. One commenter said she had a problem with them too. But I think the problem I had was probably self-inflicted, since I cut down the sleeve pattern and the armhole separately and didn't walk the seams to test them together. But hey, no shoulder width adjustment necessary which is a first in the Big 3/4 for me.
All in all, though, I'm generally very happy with this pattern and my new blouse. The only thing I don't like and can't change is the paisley placement. Oh well, it could've been worse.
I'm not sure if I'm going to get to finish it before Sunday. Tomorrow night I have a work dinner meeting and Friday night and Saturday all-day, a conference. I'm finally going to be able to wear some of those office clothes I made last April. And the weather is cooperating by cooling off, so I might even dig out some of the pantyhose too. But we'll see on that. LOL!
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Still a Keeper
Happy Valentine's Day!
I wish I could take credit for making these beautiful cupcakes, but nope, wasn't me. DS#2's girlfriend made them and brought them over for all of us. And at midnight, there's even still some left! I wouldn't let anyone eat one until I snapped a photo. They were just so pretty.
* * * * *
So, I have actually been sewing a bit, still working on Butterick 5300. I cut and sewed a muslin and decided I was good to go on the bodice. The wrinkle you see below is a bad pin job - look at the bottom edge of the blouse!
The sleeves were still an unknown until the muslin. The finished bicep width is printed on the sleeve pattern pieces. My pattern armholes were size 1x but my actual bicep width plus ease falls between the 1x and 2x measurements. I also had made that tuck across the bodice mentioned last post and so I scooped the bottom of the armhole to compensate and cut the size 2x sleeve to give it a try.
In the pic below, the sleeve on your right is the 2x with no adjustment. Way too much cap ease. That's a big pleat at the top making it stand up.
The sleeve on the left is the 2x but I didn't force all the ease into the cap and instead let about 1/2" of each underarm seam fall into the seam allowance. In other words, what I ended up with was this morphed sleeve below. I also shortened it considerably because I hate those "long" short sleeves that scream frumpy to me.
While I was taking pics of pattern pieces, I also snapped this one to show the difference between the A/B/C cup piece (left) and the D/DD cup piece (right). Oh, and those are Dani's nose and toes at the top of the pic. ;-)
I still haven't found the fabric I really want so I pulled a second choice from the stash. Here's where I am as of tonight.
When tracing the pattern, I overcompensated at the hips so it's flaring out too much. I already sewed the front waist darts all the way to the hem and I'll sew deeper sideseam allowances. I think I'm also going to purposely lose the vents at the bottom. I don't need them. I also still need to sew the back waist darts.
I made the view with the back yoke since it was different, and added piping because after sewing the yoke on the first time, it got lost and what's the point of a yoke if it can't be seen. But I think on the next version, I'm going to lengthen it. It looks a little short and out of proportion, don't you think? But that's a style choice and an easy fix, so I won't blame the pattern for this one. Much.
I also decided to pipe the collar. You can't really see it in the full-length pic above, but it does actually show up in real life.
I'm going to finish this tomorrow. There's no more football to distract me. (Sob!) Both sons will be with their girlfriends I'm sure, and DH is out of town. It will just be me and the dogs, and the sewing machines.
I wish I could take credit for making these beautiful cupcakes, but nope, wasn't me. DS#2's girlfriend made them and brought them over for all of us. And at midnight, there's even still some left! I wouldn't let anyone eat one until I snapped a photo. They were just so pretty.
* * * * *
So, I have actually been sewing a bit, still working on Butterick 5300. I cut and sewed a muslin and decided I was good to go on the bodice. The wrinkle you see below is a bad pin job - look at the bottom edge of the blouse!
The sleeves were still an unknown until the muslin. The finished bicep width is printed on the sleeve pattern pieces. My pattern armholes were size 1x but my actual bicep width plus ease falls between the 1x and 2x measurements. I also had made that tuck across the bodice mentioned last post and so I scooped the bottom of the armhole to compensate and cut the size 2x sleeve to give it a try.
In the pic below, the sleeve on your right is the 2x with no adjustment. Way too much cap ease. That's a big pleat at the top making it stand up.
The sleeve on the left is the 2x but I didn't force all the ease into the cap and instead let about 1/2" of each underarm seam fall into the seam allowance. In other words, what I ended up with was this morphed sleeve below. I also shortened it considerably because I hate those "long" short sleeves that scream frumpy to me.
While I was taking pics of pattern pieces, I also snapped this one to show the difference between the A/B/C cup piece (left) and the D/DD cup piece (right). Oh, and those are Dani's nose and toes at the top of the pic. ;-)
I still haven't found the fabric I really want so I pulled a second choice from the stash. Here's where I am as of tonight.
When tracing the pattern, I overcompensated at the hips so it's flaring out too much. I already sewed the front waist darts all the way to the hem and I'll sew deeper sideseam allowances. I think I'm also going to purposely lose the vents at the bottom. I don't need them. I also still need to sew the back waist darts.
I made the view with the back yoke since it was different, and added piping because after sewing the yoke on the first time, it got lost and what's the point of a yoke if it can't be seen. But I think on the next version, I'm going to lengthen it. It looks a little short and out of proportion, don't you think? But that's a style choice and an easy fix, so I won't blame the pattern for this one. Much.
I also decided to pipe the collar. You can't really see it in the full-length pic above, but it does actually show up in real life.
I'm going to finish this tomorrow. There's no more football to distract me. (Sob!) Both sons will be with their girlfriends I'm sure, and DH is out of town. It will just be me and the dogs, and the sewing machines.
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