A Couple of Round Tuits

The cardi make and the dress re-make have been on my To Do list forEVER. I made the dress 3-4 years ago and shortly after it became too big. Since I love the print and colors, I've wanted to re-do it. I've also wanted a lightweight short-sleeved brown cascade cardi for far too long. I need the extra layer in an air-conditioned office and brown goes with so much in my wardrobe (and matches this dress too, actually, although the colors are off in the photo).

I'm happy to report that both items are now in my current wardrobe.

The cardi is a quick sew, using Simplicity 1945, which I had used once before for a beige winter version. I had it cut out last weekend but needed to get some more dark brown thread before I could sew it. Both of which I did yesterday. There's no pattern indication for short sleeves so I just eyeballed it and folded up the pattern pieces evenly so all the seams would match.

The dress re-make was a little more convoluted, especially since I also wanted to shorten it about 4 inches but without losing any of the brown "stripe" at the bottom, which meant taking the length from the waist, which meant ripping apart almost the whole dang dress. I cheated and cut the seams apart. I was making it smaller anyway, so losing seam allowances wasn't a big deal. But since this knit is kind of spring-y with a mind of its own, I had to cut very slowly to keep things even or else I would've ended up with very jagged cuts.

The original make had a front empire seam but no matching horizontal back seam. It does now, because I had to remove the unwanted length that way. Along with shortening the length about 4", I removed about 10-12" in circumference, split across the sideseams.

I took a before pic but haven't taken the after yet, since it's lazy Sunday and I'm not camera-ready. I'll do that when I wear it and show you the difference.