I’ve spent quite a bit of time sewing up muslin lately. First I dug out a dress pattern I drafted back in 2011 when we lived in Wyoming. It fit perfectly. Back then. Last week I could zip up the dress but didn’t have the courage to sit down, hehe. So I mocked it up in muslin, with wide seam allowances for the side seams, to see how much it needed to be adjusted.
Not much, as it turned out – adding ½” at each side seam gave me enough room to sit down comfortably. Well, comfortably… for a woven. Now that I’ve been living in knits for years, I have apparently developed a new definition of comfortable. That new definition includes a stretchy hem. I don’t know how I’m going to get that in a woven dress.
I was all set to cut some fabric for that dress when I thought hmm, what if I could make a dress without a zipper? Back to the drawing board – this time using my SFD Shirt Kit blueprint as in the black dress I made last year. I drew in a jewel neckline and copied the side seam shape from hip to hem from the adjusted 2011 draft. It fits quite nicely once belted, and I now have a couple of narrow elastic belts thanks to Ruthie’s comment about them on Stitcher’s Guild. I like the stretchy belts much more than the regular unforgiving leather kind.
So now I’m ready to cut the wool suiting. It’s been washed and dried, needs to be ironed. I’ll iron it today.
Next up was supposed to be a jacket to match the dress but I’m finding myself dreaming about all kinds of other jackets. Something in red, maybe. Or maybe not. It’s just that I’ve been sewing black and dark gray (muslin doesn’t count) these last few weeks and I’m ready for a break.
Even with polymer, I’ve been working mainly with gray. Well, silver. But that’s really a shade of gray. Like these mica shift beads. They’re the right size for earrings and a pendant necklace. They might even get finished soon.
And that’s all I have for now.
See you soon!
(Originally published on my old blog, Studio Alexandra.)
