First items on my
Summer Sewing With A Plan are ready!
1) Half circle skirt in blue mixed cotton. At least I think/hope it's part cotton... I bought the fabric ages and ages ago, and half of it became the first sewn garment featured on this blog (
a pleated summer skirt). I've had loads of grand ideas for the 1,5 metres left of this fabric, but nothing has ever seemed right. This may not be a fancy fabric, and it has a shady content, but it's grease and dirt-resistant, it hardly wrinkles and the pleated version is one of my most used items. Hence; another half circle skirt! =) This time with an invisible side-zip.
On a side-note: now I understand the whole shebang about using invisible-zipper feet. I'd only tried it on very thin and flimsy fabric, and thought it was a big hoax. But on this sturdier fabric it worked great!
2) Jersey top. Not much to the naked eye, but a big deal to me as I've adressed and - keep your fingers crossed - conquered
the fitting issues in my previous makes! The excellent advices I got on my post really summed up to one thing: a modified SBA. What?! I'm an E-cup, for heavens sake. A very new situation to me... However, my starting point was my sloper for wovens. That sloper has undergone serious alterations, amongst others an FBA. Protruding things stretches jersey more than flat surfaces, meaning that what would in woven have been needed extra fabric for my bust, was in jersey surpluce.
Not wanting to alter the length of the sideseam or the shoulderseam, I reduced the overbust, the neckline and the underbust-gathers. I cut up the front bodice along these lines:
And then overlapped the desired amout (meaning: I made a rough estimation by testing the last top and tested by pinching how much it made sense to reduce over the actual bust. So, I guessed). It worked out darn well!
I also reduced the sleeveheads so the sleeve is inserted flat.
3) Time to test the new top-pattern as a dress! This is a real Frankenstein... The
skirt and
midriff is from the
chevron dress (with 1,5 cm added at center front of midriff-piece), the
back bodice is from when I altered the chevron-dress pattern for a
V-neck dress that didn't get made, the
front bodice and the
sleeves are from the new TNT. (And I traced all pieces so all patterns are complete! Quite shocking...)
I've skipped the stabilizer in the underbust seam, but kept it for the shoulders. The waist is helped by an elastic inserted in the overlock seam. I messed it up a bit, though, as I sewed in the elastic wrong (forgot to stretch it and put it on the skirt side instead of on the midriff side) so this dress will be best to wear with a belt. The elastic may also get a bit better after washing. Ah, well, this was the test-run dress =)
New solution to finishing the neckline: cut a 4 cm wide strip and treat it like a mix between biastape and waistband. Attatch right side to right side...
...fold over the overlock-seam so it's engulfed by the band and top-stitch with a zig-zag just next to the seam. Setting my machine on a narrow zic-zag, I can use my zipper-foot (or whatever it is, that's what I most often use it for) and get really close. The finished band ends up a bit round, but I like the effect.
All the hems are folded under once and then top-stitched with a narrow zic-zag.
That was my three easy starting projects; fast to make, versitile and easy to wear. Now it's time for a couple of more jersey projects on the summer SWAP!
Love, Erika
