Butterick 5244 day 4: fitting the back or beating a dead horse

Thanks everyone for your comments on my muse dress!  Those pockets deserve a blog post of their own sometime, especially my practice pockets.  Now we're up to day 4 of the dress, tweaking the back fit.

This is what the side view looked like last night, pre-tweak:



And this is what it looks like now:


It's hard to tell, there are two darts, one on each side of the CB seam, and I also tweaked the CB seam and the side seams a little bit too.


Here it is on Emma.  I didn't iron and you can see the threads from where I ripped out some basting stitches.


So what do you think?  I don't like how the CB seam looks now, especially over my butt.  I suppose some things to keep in mind are that I haven't cut down the SA on the CB seam nor side seam; and I haven't ironed.

I'm kind of thinking of ripping out the darts and the CB seam and putting in double darts on each side of the CB seam for  a total of 4 darts.  Should I continue to beat this dead horse or not???

Here's the inside of the purchased knit dress that fits great; you can see the darts.  Also the width from the waist to CB seam is a lot less on this dress than on the muse dress but the width of the bottom of this dress is actually MORE than the muse dress.



And the muse dress is actually navy blue.  Some folks commented on the purple color, and I see what they mean, on some monitors it looks purple.  But it's really navy blue.

Meanwhile, what do you think my new PR name should be? The polldaddy poll totally didn't work so here are your choices; vote in the comments the old fashioned way:

• Vacuuming the Lawn (blog name)
• Lead Vacuum (derived from blog name)
• BlossomKyle (my twitter name)
• Magic Panties (derived from Mary Nanna's "Magic Pantries" post)
• Juicy Details (from an airport smoothie stand Pete saw in the Netherlands)

Be well!

Butterick 5244: day 3: welt pocket vortex

Broke after PR weekend Chicago...my pockets turned inside out..

Thanks everyone for your comments on my Cynthia Rowley dress, and the Muse dress in progress,  much appreciated!

I sewed almost all of today.  Took breaks for lunch, dinner, a phone call, and I went to my favorite gym class first thing this morning. But what was number 1 on my mind today were welt pockets.  Gwen your comment "where's the food" made me laugh--if I sew something else has to give, and I have a lot of food I made frozen now (in fact the minestrone seems to be multiplying in the freezer...) and didn't read much this weekend.

The Butterick 5244 is rated "easy".  According to the Singer Photo Guide to Sewing, "Making welt pockets is an expert tailoring technique that requires precise marking, cutting and stitching."   Hrm, contradiction.

I've never made welt pockets before, and in the spirit of elevating my sewing post-PR weekend, I learned about welts through the pattern instructions, Singer guide, and a few online tutorials.    Most online tutorials are for double welt pockets; the muse dress has single welts.   I made three practice pockets on "scraps" before cutting to the chase.  As I'm running out of steam tonight, maybe another time I will blog my three test cases.  But if you want to see them they are in my Sewing 2011 album.

I think the big tips I learned that weren't in the pattern instructions are: interface the garment in the area of the pocket; draw the stitching and cutting lines on the interfacing; stitch through the stitching lines you just drew on the interfacing so it's easy to see the pocket placement on the right side of the garment; clip the triangle all the way to the corner...but don't go beyond it (or you end up with pocket sample 1).

Here's what the inside prep looked like (I wound up peeling off the excess interfacing later)


Ok, so here are the finished pockets on the garments themselves.  It was a nerve wracking moment cutting the pocket open...others have written that before on their blogs but now I truly understand!!  "I'm cutting a big slash right in the front of my dress...." anxiety.

My right welt pocket:


My left welt pocket:


On Emma:

Pocket from the inside:


They have a few little flaws; Gorgeous Things warned of 'pinching' and Becky-home-ecky-ness and there's a little bit of pinching with my pockets, but not too bad. 



I've got both hands in my pockets; dress is knee length now!



Side view is still shapeless; one idea is to add some elastic to tighten it up and put a tab with more of those anchor buttons on top of it; another is to add darts! (I have a knit dress I bought 5 years ago. The print isn't "me" but the fit is fab. I just looked at it now to see why it fits so well --it has back darts! in a knit dress! I never would have thought of that).


Back view:


On Emma:


And of course I twin needle stitched the sleeve and dress hems:


If you want to see closeups of the collar, please view my muse day 2 post.

(I have read the word "pocket" so many times, it has lost meaning. Pocket pocket pocket pocket pocket.)

Tmw we get to leave work at 2pm so I'm thinking of going to Joann's for the $3.99 Vogue pattern sale, and buying some denim (I have an urge to make a denim skirt?) then coming home and sewing in darts in the back of the dress.  Or maybe I should come straight home and do everything I neglected to do this weekend that does not involve sewing.

Be well!

Butterick 5244 day 2, still in progress

Butterick 5244 is coming along....(I first posted about it yesterday).  Today I spent several hours working on the collar, tabs, yoke facing, and hand sewing the yoke facing to the yoke, and of course sewing those adorable buttons on too!

I think my big tip is to sew the collar onto the dress starting in the middle and working to one end, then start in the middle again and sew to the other end. This way the collar is (mostly) centered properly.  (Tip courtesy of Mary Nanna).  While the collar took a long time, I think it was worth it!  I had been concerned about my machine handling up to 6 layers of fabric (yoke, collar (which is two layers), yoke facing, tab which is two layers)  plus three layers of interfacing (yoke, collar, tab).  If I had used the ponte roma double knit, it might have been more difficult...but this is a medium weight knit and it handled it fine.

I used a stiff tailor weight interfacing on the yoke and a softer knit interfacing on the tab and collar.

Here you can see some of my fabric stash has escaped from the fabric closet (really, there's no room for it in the fabric closet):




I'm definitely going to shorten the dress...I had added a inch or so on because I thought it was going to be too short.  I also need to address the CB seam since it's just too tent-like back there, and, oh yeah, that little detail of adding  the  functional welt pockets.  Which I've never done before--don't worry I'm going to practice first.


In other news, I can't get the poll to appear embedded in this post the way I want it to, but if you'd like to vote for my new PR name, click on this (note I am not holding myself to the poll results):
Poll: What should my new Pattern Review name be?

Good night and be well!