Express clean out

There is still lots to clean out in our house and yesterday I spent some time planning a few items to wear when we go to the US next month while pulling out the fabrics that just won’t do anymore (stratchy feel, dated print, poor quality and ‘what was I thinking’). Granted, none of this weekend’s pieces will keep me warm, they are layers.

 

I bought this fabric in Melbourne two years ago when 5 of our sewing buddy group spent 5 days fabric shopping. I focused on buying purple and green fabrics and this is a piece of memories from that trip. I’ve used a combat print FOE on the sleeve hem and the centre trim uses the selvedge. The front neck has been lowered and I used the selvedge on the centre front seam of the collar. This is view A without the belt. If the hem was lower, I would add a belt, but I’m a bit short in height to carry this off well. PS, I’ve made the bodice slimmer so I’ll put the updated pics up tonight. There’s just no shape otherwise.

This is the fifth new pattern that I’ve adjusted this month and I was really happy that the hems were even. It’s now ingrained in my mind to measure from the waist point on the pattern or use the side seam marks to double check the length. The centre back hem is 2 cm lower than the front to cover my behind evenly. In the cold, I’ll wear this over a black thermal, like the picture. That’s the plan. The next version will have seams great on the shoulder seams.

 
Here’s Butterick 5525 View B. The front and back fabric is left over from last week’s green dress. I just love the colour and the way this fabric handles (from The Fabric Store). The sleeve contrast is also a left over piece that I know won’t wear well but it does the job. When I started to use this print, I stopped, took out similar useless fabric pieces from my stash and they are now in the local charity bin. I’m over poor quality fabric.
Anyway, the centre back seam is not on the fold. I’ve shaped it and it suits my sway back better. After I sewed this top, the front neckline was gapping too much so I unpicked it and too 1.5cm off both sides of the centre front side seams and the neckline now sits much better. This pattern has a couple of neat versions that I plan to do.
In the pipeline is M5978 cardi in a print. This pattern is kind of boring, but I’ll try it. There’s also a Maggie London knit dress B5242 ready to make up. There are plans for Simplicity 2369 dress and another Maggie London knit B5418
 

5 comments

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.