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Month: August 2019

Reversible Reggie

August 9, 2019 / / 0 Comments
My husband and I had a Hawaiian vacation the first week of December last year and I had a long list of items to sew for that getaway that included a lot of easy to wear beachy dresses.
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I love a good wrap dress and the Seamwork Reggie has been on my ToSew list for a while, so it made its way onto my vacation list.  But, because I can’t ever just leave well enough alone, I decided to make it fully reversible. 
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The solid blue is a cotton gauze that I had long enough to forget where it came from and the floral is a mystery fabric that I got from Seattle ReCreative.  It feels mostly cotton, but it could be a blend and it has a lovely texture to it.

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I basically just made two copies of the dress, omitting all of the facings and adding the waist tie to the opposite side waist seam from where I basted the front tie on both copies, then put both dresses together, right sides together and sewed with a 5/8″ seam allowance. Except for the hem, which I sewed at 1 ¼”. 
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Then I trimmed the seam allowance all the way around with my pinking shears then turned it through one of the arm holes.  Turn the sleeve hems under and topstitch everything all together and voila!  Easy peasy!
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As it turns out, the dress is a little big on me.  It is still wearable, but the way the ties are attached, I can’t get it to be more snug.  Because of that, I don’t wear it much and I only actually wear the print side. 
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Even though this one didn’t turn out as great as I’d hoped, I would like to make some more reversible dresses.  They are nice for traveling, although I don’t seem to travel as much for work these days.  Have you ever made a reversible garment?

Purple Lady Skater

August 2, 2019 / / 0 Comments
I wanted to make a new knit dress because it’s been a while since I’ve made a new everyday dress, but I was having decision anxiety over what to make and which fabric to use.  So, I made my husband come into my sewing room and pick a fabric for me to use.  He picked this lovely purple cotton lycra knit that has been in my stash long enough for me to not remember where it came from.

I only had 2 yards, so that limited my pattern selection without needing to color block.  I keep my patterns indexed in Evernote, and one of the tags I use is “2 yards or less” to indicate that I can make the pattern with less than 2 yards.  So, when I filtered my pattern list on “dress, pdf, knit, 2 yards or less” I got 14 hits.  Several of them are ones I haven’t even made yet, so I need to fix that someday, but right now, I was looking for something I knew I could make in a day.  So, I decided it was time to make my old favorite TNT Lady Skater pattern.

I have had great love for the Kitschy Coo Lady Skater and have not bothered to hide it!  I hadn’t made one since I lost weight and I had originally made some changes to the pattern to get a better fit, so I actually thought this might be a good time to find a different pattern for this simple dress silhouette to try out.  But I actually couldn’t find another fit and flare knit dress that could be made with less than 2 yards.

So, I reprinted my beloved Lady Skater, which was the first PDF pattern I ever made, and realized how far along PDF patterns have come since that one!  The pattern doesn’t have layers, which is fine because at least half the time I forget to go turn off the sizes I’m not cutting anyway.  The pattern has no line distinction for the sizes and only uses different colored solid lines.  I only have a black and white printer these days, so it was very obvious that the pattern isn’t great for printing in black and white.  Luckily, the pattern is simple enough that it wasn’t actually a problem.  But I did go over the size I wanted to cut out with a highlighter anyway, just to be sure.

My measurements fit squarely into the size 6.  Previously, I made the size 8, which is the biggest size it comes in.  The changes I made to that size 8 were: I took the shoulders in a bit, I raised the waistline by an inch and I did a small swayback adjustment.  I compared the size 6 to the size 8 and the shoulders were not as wide as my adjusted size 8 shoulders and the waistline was the same as my adjusted waist on the size 8.  So, I decided to just make the size 6 once as is and do all the fitting over again.

I added pockets, using the Colette Moneta pocket piece placed 4″ from the top of the skirt pieces.  Because, of course all dresses should have pockets!

The fitting changes I want to make to my next version:

  • take a bit of width out of the shoulders, because I hate having that little bubble on the top of my shoulder when I lift my arms.  
  • sway back adjustment to remove some of those wrinkles on my back
  • maybe I need to add a bit of length to the back of the skirt to allow for my bodacious booty. 

Do you have any patterns that are worth starting over with?

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