Friday, April 1, 2011

More on M5661 and Simplicity 4076

First a picture of a bumper sticker that I liked.

My gym has four infant slots at any given time. I need two whenever I go because the bear cub is not walking yet. The reason they give me is that they only have personnel to take care of four that need to be carried in the event of an emergency. Anyway, I love this class called Soul Grooves that is sort of a dance medley that takes place at 11 am on Friday, but I can hardly ever take it because there aren't two slots available most times when I call. They allow me to call 48 hours in advance and I have my cell phone alarm set so that I can speed dial them when it comes up and I still don't always get it. I found out why today and that is because the class instructor takes up one of the slots. So frustrating.

Now, on to the sewing...I love my M5661 blouse that I made with the puffy sleeves. It makes me feel girly. I'm thinking about bringing the sides in a smidge more, but I'll wait until I wear it a full day to see how that much ease feels. Most of the sewing blogs I read are about people that are very into fashion and their priorities are a good fit and appearance, but I'll admit that my top priority is comfort.

The changes that I did make to M5661 are the same changes that I had made to the muslins for the other view, but I also scooped the sleeve openings of the back piece more. Those changes were as follows: I decreased the length from the shoulder to breast by 1/2" all the way across. I straighten the shoulder to almost straight across since I have very little slant in my shoulders across. I put in a large sway back adjustment (doubling the typical suggested amount). I increased the curve on the sides to 1/2" smaller 3" below the side bust dart on both the front and back pattern pieces. I decreased each back pattern piece by 2" across. I changed the back buttons to have a back seam and a hook and loop at the top. Because this view had sleeves, I had to also take a 1/2" out of the two sleeve pieces to fit the armhole. I plan on coming back to this pattern again, but I've put it aside for now so that I can dig into the knit fabric that my cousin so generously sent.

I've decided to make a few tops of Simplicity 4076. I read through a lot of reviews of this pattern and most mentioned not having to make even FBAs to make it fit, I decided to skip the muslin and try to make one straight from the pattern. I picked one of the smaller pieces of fabric I had, which was 1 1/3 yards of 60 inch fabric and cut out a size 24 for view B.

Everything went wrong with this pattern so it turned out I made a muslin after all. I often read on various people's blogs reasons not to sew when your tired, but if I didn't sew when I was tired, I would never get to sew. After all I do have 3 children 3 and under. First I tried to sew a Mobius strip of of the three pieces. I finally figured out the reason I was getting confused was that I cut one of the pieces upside down so there was no way that three pieces were going to work with all right sides showing. Since the pattern pieces barely fit on the fabric (size 24 suggests 1 5/8 yard) there wasn't an option to cut the piece again, I figured I had a muslin after all. I then proceded to sew the neck binding on the wrong side and found that I hadn't cut out the piece I thought I had upside down, but the other front piece, so the whole thing was sort of inside out after sewing the binding and the sides together. Well, it is a muslin after all so I didn't worry about it. The mistakes continued and I won't even go into them, but I am going to make sure that I get more sleep before I cut a wearable version.

I did like the outcome. It is very comfortable and I think the fit is mostly good other than my sway back, which I've decided to leave as I'd rather not have the extra seam it would require. The only change to the pattern I made was to add an inch to the neckline for modesty. Here are my pics.


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