Party Dress - Final Pin Fitting

final fit

Finally I have bitten the bullet and completed the pin fitting on the party dress. I hesitated for fear of doing it wrong... but decided enough was enough and just did it.
First I marked all the take-ins, then I took out all the pins and laid the pieces out flat. Then, I could measure the total amount I took the dress in. There was a lot of variation - with much more taken in at the front. Having decided this looked weird, I divided the total amount reduced by the number of edges - giving me 36mm.

waist and hem level

The other modification I made at this time was lowering the neckline - by literally just cutting it down. I did this on the front center piece, lowering 3/4", and the side fronts (including arm hole) tapering to nothing at the side seam.
Then I repinned everything back together with an even reduction at the waist of 36mm per edge.
Next was a fitting. Having decided the waist was adequate I was disappointed that the repinning didn't eliminate another problem I was having - the front hem riding about 2.5" higher than the rear.
The solution was lengthening the dress at the lower "raise or lower here" marking - which I had forgotten to mark on most of the pieces. Poo!
So I marked each piece, unpinned from the hem to about there, cut across the line, pinned in a scrap of fabric, and finally re-pinned all the lower skirt edges. I lowered the front 2.5", tapering to 1" at the side seam and to nothing at the rear princess seams. I used checkered fabric which was really quite helpful in terms of measurements.
Five checkered extensions were added: one center front, one each side front, and one each side back. You can see them in the pictures.

with shoes

Final fitting... on the corset goes again. I was satisfied with the hang of the lower hem now!
I am satisfied with all of the fitting (sleeves not included... don't know what I'm going to do about those still) and am ready to move on to the next step - finalizing the muslin pattern pieces for cutting.
I have made all of my fabric purchases now - rayon lining from onlinefabricstore.net, and silk crepe de chine for the underlining from dharmatrading.com... where I also picked up some silk charmeuse.
The crepe de chine has great drape and all - but does nothing for the opacity of the dress. But it turns out that the sorta-impulse purchase of charmeuse has perfect opacity to conceal the corset. I was only going to make little drawers but now a corset cover (in this case a little camisole) is in the cards (if I have time).

love that level hem

P.S. sorry for the blurry mirror photos. They may be awful, but they help a lot with fitting!

Self-Drafted Summer Top in White Linen

We had a pretty evil heat wave a few weeks ago - a record breaking 110. Hot weather always makes me want to reach for natural fiber garments... and with the sweat situation, preferably not knits! Linens are completely made for hot weather, no? I picked up this linen cotton blend in a practical bleachable white during a recent sale.
Then, I challenged myself to make a top with only one yard. And draft it myself.

Using Eileen Fisher as an inspiration, I made up this boxy number with kimono sleeves, longer back, and a faced neckline with a broad shape.

I used the back neck piece from a previous make and sort of riffed from there. I made it about an inch wide and only dropped the front about an inch lower (not really low enough). All the other seams were straight lines, so it was dead easy to draft and fairly simple to construct other than the neckline.

I gave the shoulder a flat felled seam and just turned the seam allowance for the arm opening - the same idea as the side vent.

The lower edge of the garment is selvage (after a few times in the wash it did need some stitching but the edge is still raw).
In fact if you visualize that the lower hem is selvedge, you can see how I drafted it out of a yard. Shoulder to shoulder was 30" and the last six was used for the neck pieces. Fabric was 58" so neck area of front and back pieces meet in the middle during layout. It may break some grain rules but it's not really something that matters on a summer top in a solid colored plain weave.
If you have never worked with linen before I do recommend a cotton linen blend. Linens can be a really loose weave (in mid and bottomweights) but the cotton just brings it all together for a great everyday look and feel. So not only can you bleach it, you can steam iron the hell out of it and use copious amounts of starch. An excellent excuse to practice your precision ironing with various seam finishes and construction techniques. It's even easy to hand finish.
I do wear this shirt. It is not exactly the best shape for me in the rear but it's nothing a few contour darts can't solve. Something to try next time!

Jammies

I made my dad some pajama pants. He likes to sail hence the themed fabric. Oddly, the only other thing I've made my dad was a pair of pajamas (top and bottom in a ramie stripe).
I did a little creative hand stitching on the tag. I think it's really important to add some kind of hang tag to homemade garments for a couple of reasons. For one, simple garments like pajama pants look pretty much the same from the front and the back. Having a tag lets you know which side is the back. Secondly, horizontal hang tags and to a lesser extent vertical tags like the one shown allow you to hang the garment from a hook when you hop in the shower and so forth. Finally, I think it's a finishing touch that lets you add a tiny bit of personality.
It's funny, but I started making these pants last year. (You can see in the picture I used a really short stitch length. This is what I would have done a year ago - these days I'm loving long stitch lengths.) The poor little pants have been sitting in a box 9/10ths finished because I was frustrated by not having enough fabric. They came out a few inches too short. I finally pulled them out and decided to do a narrow hem and just... not care that they were a touch too short. I mean, no one wants to trip over their jammies, and people are usually barefoot when in nightwear anyway. It's better to have stitched and sent off than to have never finished at all.

How about that print?

Thematic tag.