Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Pastille in progress

Have you seen Sew Colette, the sew-along for the Colette Sewing Handbook? I sat out for the first round (Meringue Skirt) but I spent my time drinking Gatorade and doing pushups to get ready for the Pastille dress. Well, it's time so I am off the bench and rarin' to go. I'm on muslin round 4, and it is looking preeetty good to me. Except in this picture. Actually, I'm not sure why I'm showing you this horrible picture.

I can juuust barely squeeze the shirt on without a zipper installed, so to make it easier to muslin on my own, I sewed up the back seam instead of pinning it each time I put it on. Without the ability to squish and squeeze and twist and wiggle, my dress form is sadly unable to get into it, hence a silly and useless picture of the muslin pinned to the front of it.

Ah, that's better. Wench, you're fired for not being able to dislocate your shoulders and shimmy into small things.

Oh by the way! The Pastille pattern is for a dress, but I'm making a shirt. Yes. That is why it is so short. Not because I am planning to leave my day job for an exciting night-time position on the street corner.

I recommend to everyone that you actually follow some of the many tutorials available at Colette patterns for doing adjustments. I got too hasty changing the darts on the first muslin without really thinking through the process. As a result, most of my seams ended up crooked. This created a bunch of wrinkles and pull spots on the top that baffled me until I remembered the difference between the way the seams had looked the first time I sewed them and the second. I actually didn't try to pin anything on muslin #2, I just took it apart somewhat and retraced my steps to correct my adjustment mistakes.

I do say, the muslin doesn't look very pretty in these pictures, but I don't think I'm being too optimistic in thinking that I'm almost there. I had to stand a bit crooked to get the pictures and the muslin fabric doesn't have the stiffness of my real fabric to keep it from wrinkling all over.
I'm cutting my fabric tonight to get started on on the real shirt, so we will find out soon enough!


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