First Make of 2015 - Meh

I sewed up this skirt and top 2-piece dress last weekend and while it's OK, it's not fabulous. Part of the "meh" is because the fabric is just not a nice ITY. I swear, Fabric.com labels everything ITY now and I'm starting to think they're on crack. It's an OK knit, but it's certainly not one of their better ones. It's a bit on the sueded/clingy side. Not *too* clingy, but more like collapsing on me, if you can understanding what I mean. Hard to explain. Still, it's better than the uber-clingy, pill-y, icky rayon crap I'm still trying to get out of the stash. ;-) I like the print, though, which is why I went ahead and used it, ignoring that little voice in my head.

The other part of the "meh" is because apparently *I* was on crack when I was sewing up the Jalie top. A top, mind you, that I have made 6 squillion times. Let me tell you, it makes a HUGE difference if you sew RS together where the gathers flip over instead of WS together. Heh. It took me nearly a whole day to figure out why the flip-over wasn't working and where I had gone wrong. (Note: When all else fails, READ the feckin' instructions!) Once I got out the seam ripper and re-sewed correctly, things worked out fine. But what an idiot moment I had.

Plus, the neckband, sewed on with my coverstitcher and a binder, isn't snug against my back neck, which never happens with my binders. Until now apparently. I'll fix that with some elastic thread threaded through the backside stitching, once I pick it up from Hancock's. I just covered it up with a cardi in the meantime. I won't tell if you won't.

Love the skirt though. I used the Simplicity KA pattern above, which is a semi-circle skirt for wovens and calls for a zipper. I omitted the zipper because knit. And I also took off 2" from each side seam of the smallest size in the envelope, 20 (for a total of 8", if you're counting), because, again, knit. I didn't just do this willy-nilly ... I have a couple of semi-circle RTW knit skirts I was copying inspired by and so I could use them as eyeballing/measurement guides. I used the contoured waistband pattern pieces (also cut down 2" per side seam to match the skirt waist) and sewed all the units together, leaving an opening in the facing for inserting elastic, and serged 1:1 onto the skirt waist. Once it was attached, I inserted the 1-1/4" wide elastic, which was cut to about 4" less than my actual waist measurement. The result is an elastic-waist pull-on skirt with a waistband that sits flat both on and off me. I didn't even stitch the opening closed on the inside because I had the seam allowances from the opening folded/flipped in such a way that the opening and elastic is invisible from the inside. I know that's hard to visualize from my words, so you'll just have to trust me on that.

I know the skirt will get lots of wear since I love the shape and black/white is almost a neutral. I think I'll make it again in another knit too because it's fun to wear flippy, girly skirts. I also think I'll like the top better after a few small adjustments ... namely, the back neckband, and maybe shortening it another inch and also sewing the sideseams a little tighter.

I've also sewed up a "muslin" of the Burda WOF casual pants I showed a couple of posts back, and am now trying to decide what fabric to get for a final pair, plus matching jacket. I thought a nice ponte would work, but now I'm second-guessing. My "muslin" was a NOT-nice ponte (also from crack-tastic Fabric.com in the same shipment) which was not supposed to be muslin fabric but it was way too polyestery/shiny to be taken seriously. I could have sent it back but I decided I did need to muslin since I haven't sewn pants in years (yikes) and it's probably a good thing I did because I do need to make a few adjustments. All of that was just a long-winded way to say that while the project is definitely still in the queue, it's stalled at the moment.

I'll get into the sewing room this weekend around football playoffs, but I may encounter analysis paralysis since I have a lot of things I want to make and no idea where to start. Hopefully, I'll come out with something. I just don't know what that something is yet.