V8571: Damage Control Mode: What would you do?

It's too big and the bodice is too long.


Here you can see how much lower than my bust the dress bustline is....

Tonight I finally basted the skirt to the bodice, sewed the side seams and discovered two issues:

1.  The bodice length is too long!  The gathered bodice is almost 2"-ish below my bust line.  When I pinned the bodice on my dress form, and even looked at it on myself, I had not noticed these issues before....but now that the skirt is on it's really obvious.

and....

2.  I prematurely bound the armhole, thinking "I'll just finish it off when I sew the side seams".
Um, no, that is not going to work.  The side seams need to be finished and then the armhole needs to be bound.

So, I got out my binder clips and clipped the shoulder seam up an inch, and it looks a lot better but then the armholes are not deep enough.

There's a sway back issue too but since there is a horizontal back seam, that's easy to fix.

Overall the dress is probably a size too big on the bottom, and possibly in the bust too. That would be easy to fix.




How to fix the too low underbust seam???

Plan A:  Cut off the armhole binding, undo the facing at the shoulder seam, resew the shoulder seam with  additional 1" SA, resew the facing in that area.  Fine tune the fit in the bodice and along the side seams.  Rebind the armhole.

Pros to plan A:  This raises the neckline so it is not as low. The armhole gets rebound and finished properly..

Cons to plan A:  front and back are no longer symmetrical with an additional 1" SA so it's probably not as easy as "just sew it straight across".    The shoulder width might be too narrow.

Plan B:  Sew bodice to the skirt with additional 1" SA.

Pros:  I don't have to mess with my facings at the neckline.  The armhole is the same size as it currently is.

Cons:  I still have to fix the shoulder seam binding.  The neckline stays the same, which is a tad too low.  Bodice and skirt at this seam probably wouldn't match.

Plan C:  I have enough of this fabric that I could, cough cough, cut a new bodice, neckband and facings with basically the size 8 at the shoulder seam and size 8 neckline....

Pros:  This would fix the majority of issues

Cons:  Well, "throwing away" all the work I already did with the neckline facing, gathering the bustline so nicely, etc.   And that was a lot of hours.

Which would you choose?  Are there any options I haven't thought of???

Be well!

Pattern Swaps & Vogue 8571

Not too bad!

Thank you for all your kind comments on my last post!  I am super excited about this dress.  So much so, that in a very unusual move for me, I worked on Vogue 8571 after work tonight.  I bound the left
armhole with biastape and then cut out the skirt portion and pinned it to my dress form. I will write more about the binding soon.


Yes, the color of my dress and the color of the dress on the pattern envelope are the same.  Now, if I only had Brooke Shields' hair!

I don't know if it's possible to be passionately in love with a dress that is half sewn, but I am with this one.  Suddenly my sewing mojo has returned and there are a bazillion things I want to sew.  YAY!


The skirt is just pinned to Izzy.


Back band is looking less wonky tonight

The origin of this pattern is MPB Day 2013, where there was a pattern swap.  I've participated in a few pattern swaps where my rule is generally "Donate but do not take any patterns, good gawd woman you don't need any more, think of how many you have at home."  Also my philosophy for several years now has generally been "less stuff more experiences" (i.e. spend money on experiences, not things) and more recently, buy no more fabric than what fits in the fabric closet.  Adhering to limits, setting boundaries, and all that.

The first time I broke this rule was for a $20 indie pattern that popped up at PR weekend 2013, the second time was the pattern above and the third time was PR Day 2014 for a pattern that I have seen many many PR members make but have never bought myself.

So do you have rules about pattern swaps?
Give but don't take?
Take but don't give (ha ha)?
Do you set limits on how many you donate and/or take (like, only take as many as you donated)??

Be well!

Vogue 8571 now in progress

I am really loving where this is heading.


Front

I was obsessing over the gathering last night so I told myself I had half an hour tonight to fuss with it, and wherever it was at a half hour later was what it would be, sort of Project Runway style.

I'm binding the armholes on this stretch woven with bias tape as per Amanda S's tutorial.   One armhole is bound in this shot and the other is about to be bound.  It's a bit unusual to bind a stretch fabric with a woven but it's working out ok so far.  I made myself stop at 9pm though....




Ok, that back band is looking a bit wonky, but let's hope that's just the angle of the pic, ok?

 Be well!

New Look 6843 view B-ish in black eyelet

My life is somewhat stabilizing after the big software release on 7/1.  I feel like everyone needs something from me at work, and some days I'm getting over 100 emails, and I still have a boatload of documentation to write and data cleanup to do and I have office hours/support labs.  However, I'm no longer working weekends (though I am tempted to put 2 totally uninterrupted hours from home this weekend, just to get a leg up).  I'm back to the gym 3x a week.  I'm reading books again.   (10% Happier (non-fiction, meditation) and All Fall Down (Jennifer Weiner's latest).)  I'm working less nights.    And I sewed a whole entire skirt last weekend!


I have sewn view D/E from New Look 6843 many times before. That's the A-line version.  I love love love how the skirt sits at the waist!  It is *so* difficult to find skirt patterns that sit at the waist, which is the most flattering look for me and my pear shape.


Apparently I sewed view B/C once before in 2006 (as per my envelope notes) but who knows what skirt that was.  I pulled out the pattern last weekend and made view B, minus the slit, and with the zipper on the side, and the CB cut on the fold because I used this fabulous 100% cotton black eyelet that I've had in my stash a long time, from Joann's.  It was in their remnant bin years ago, and wasn't quite 1.25 yards.  Usually all their remnants are under a yard but this one wasn't.     I decided to go with more of a pencil shape because the eyelet runs straight up and down the fabric. It seemed like the pencil shape would "go better" with this fabric.

I decided to use bias tape (also from stash) for the waistband and for the hem.  Basically folding the fabric in half meant that my skirt length was about 1.25 inches above the cut line for view B.


I lined it with black fabric that feels like rayon challis--but I remember buying it from Rag Shop (RIP) when I was a college student, probably summer of 1996 or '97.  It feels fabulous!

I noticed on Carolyn's blog, one of her interior skirt shots, instead of sewing a dart she sewed in a pleat in the lining instead, which makes a lot of sense. So that is what I did here too.


Here I've flipped up the hems to show what it looks like inside. I used my narrow hem foot to hem the lining (on the right) and think it looks great!  (though the basting stitch for the bias tape doesn't look so great--I suppose I could remove the basting stitch but it only shows from the wrong side and probably is providing some stability...)


Because it is 100% cotton, and I had driven to work wearing the skirt, it is already wrinkled for the ivy shots.

My work photographer calls these "mug shots"


Could you identify me in a lineup?



Sweet William from the Princeton Farmers Market

Be well!!

Actual sewing has occurred!

Sneak peek at actual skirt I sewed this past weekend!

More tmw!

What I've been up to

Celebratory cake on 7/1/14.  We had fruit tart and brownies too!

So, I'm going to indulge in a totally non-sewing related post.

I'm a bit punchy.

My big work project, which started in earnest for me 21 months ago, went live on Tuesday.  I had seen the go live date of 7/1/14 for so long now written in so many ways for 21 months:
7/1
7/1/14
7/1/2014
July 1, 2014

and on Tuesday morning, when my eyes popped open at 4:30am, and I turned on my laptop and looked in the bottom right corner of my laptop screen, there it was.

7/1/2014

I am SO happy, SO excited, SO relieved.  There is still plenty left to do, but the heavy lifting is over, the analyze, design, develop, customization, spec writing, configuration, business process, testing, initial data cleanup, data conversion, data validation phases are all over.    I have been teaching folks on the new system, and there more training to be done and documentation to write. I will run some labs. There will be more data cleanup.  There will be better data checking.  There will be a phase 2.   I doubt that phase 2 will be as much work, as intense, as stressful, or as meeting filled as phase 1.  There was a week where I had reached my personal record of 21 meetings in 4 consecutive days.  Could it ever be that busy again?

I have been working 6 days a week for a while now.  I worked the last 18 days straight, some of them were 12 hour days.

I feel like I just graduated with a masters degree in PeopleSoft Grants.  Or like it was Christmas morning.

We had an amazing session with the university president on Wednesday morning.  I felt so proud to be on this project.   A project that I did not volunteer for.  A project that was not in my job description.   This project was one of the most difficult and stressful things I have ever done.  There is a school of thought that anything worth doing is hard work.  This was hard work.  It was worth doing.   I have learned and grown so much, been challenged in many ways.  And I'm so glad the project is released!

I'm taking these three days off, but afterward I look forward to reconnecting with you, my blog readers, doing some sewing again, and posting here actively again!!

Be well.