S9776: Super cute, but not yet wearable muslin

Inspired by the PR class "More Knits", I made a muslin of a stretch lace tank with FOE neckline/armhole finish that continued into straps.  The fabric is from my spring fabric bender shopping with Elizabeth in San Diego.  I was originally going to make KID MD's raglan sleeved shirt with lace front overlay but after making the mini-tank for the PR class, the tank won.

It's adorable.
But it's not yet wearable.
Do you know why?

The front "point" is way too far over toward my arms.   I need to move it over toward my center, and it needs some armhole scooping if I'm going to keep the strap length the same. The FOE is irritating my skin at the point, because of the strap placement and strap length, I'm pretty sure.

Above I used chalk to draw the line where I'm going to do some muslin surgery. I think I can make this a wearable muslin.

Yes, this pattern is for knits and it has darts!  I know!  and a center back seam!  I know!

I'm going to fix that swayback too... (and yes, I bought wonder clips. I know!  I read a post about the pros/cons of wonder clips and binder clips.  I decided to give wonder clips a try).


My black eyed susans.
My female pumpkin flower never opened and now the baby pumpkin is shriveling up.
Not a good year for pumpkins in my backyard.  Last year was a miracle and I enjoyed every minute of being a pumpkin mama.

It's still summer!!
Be well!

Catching up...

So much to catch up on....
Bloglovin
So a few weeks late, but here goes:
Follow my blog with Bloglovin
Honestly, I never used Google Reader, just read blogs down the sidebar of my own blog...but it is pretty cool how bloglovin sends email with all of the posts y'all write, right in there...

Online classes
I finished watching all 3.5 hours of Sew Better, Sew Faster:  Garment Industry Techniques by Janet Pray, on Craftsy.  Wow.  There is a boatload of good stuff in there. Lots of fast and furious notetaking on my part.    Janet shows how to sew without pins or basting, and how to make a super-professional looking jacket.  I won't make the jacket anytime soon (though it would be awesome if I could make it in time to show her at the ASE).  My list of sewing tools to buy grows!  Highly recommend.  LOVE the notetaking feature.

I enrolled in Understanding Knit Fabrics on PR.  It starts Tuesday night but I already have received my kit and have been fondling the 20 knit fabric samples.  I am super-excited for this class.

My new calling cards.
I was running out of my old calling cards, and Moo was having a sale, so here are my new cards:



Old Moo cards, left, new Moo cards, right.

I think I might like the old cards better but I like the color of the new cards, so...

Proof of actual sewing

Here is the muslin I started working on last weekend, sneak peek, another oops shot:

And here's one of those "looks like some kinda weird instagram photo" but it's not, maybe my camera is starting to die.

Anyway, that was just the muslin and it had some fitting issues, especially in the back, that I 'fixed'.

So then I started cutting it out of this purple lusciousness (I'm skipping over a whole lot of fabric related drama):

Pinned to Izzy

and was feeling all proud of myself for cutting knits single layer....and then realized when I cut the 3rd piece , I had not followed the cutting diagram (which I did follow when I cut the first two pieces, I don't know why I forged ahead with the 3rd piece without consulting the cutting diagram again) and didn't have enough fabric left to cut the 4th piece.   ARGH!   Cue fabric related meltdown (ok, that's a bit of an overstatement.  But it was definitely time for dinner by that point).

For a dress pattern that has  all of 2 pieces (really, 2 pieces), I have already invested about 8 hours in the muslin, cutting the underlining to underline some very special yet incredibly see-through fabric, making a sample of fabric + underlining, then ditching that plan (special fabric and underlining) entirely because I couldn't handle the amount of chevron matching that would be involved, and then cutting into my new "real" fabric to this, um, point.

So I wrote three pattern reviews tonight, so I'm all caught up on that, yay!

Here are my pumpkin vines:


Green eyed susans from the Princeton Farmers Market (with decorative grass):

And my black eyed susans that came back:

And cookies I made last weekend:

Be well!!