Monthly Archives: June 2012

Sometimes my sewing projects go perfectly, sometimes they don’t. This is one of those times. I have a plain white t-shirt. It’s a hand-off from Neil who won’t wear it because of the V-neck.

I won’t wear it because it has no shape. Well, cylindrical is a shape, so what I mean is it has no shaping. So I’ve seen enough t-shirt mods on the internet. I have sewing skills. I figure I ought to be able to fix this problem.

I started by making a deeper V-neck, and then trimming that with some ribbon. I trimmed it because I don’t really like the “hey, I can cut this knit fabric and let it roll and it doesn’t unravel” mentality of t-shirt mods. It’ll unravel eventually. Do you really want to slap that kind of a short life expectancy on your project?

I knew I wanted to make this shirt fitted under the bust. I figured I could gather the fabric and create some ruching. I knew I’d want the bust fabric gathered center front, and the torso fabric gathers more spread out. You can almost see what I was aiming for here:

So I pinned and measured carefully. Then cut the fabric. Next I ran some thread loosely through the raw edges. I thought I wanted the gathers to fall naturally so I just kinds spread them out evenly in their designated sections, pinned everything, and sewed the edges back together with a zig-zag stitch.

And the gathers didn’t naturally spread themselves out. Nope. The “centered” ruching is awkwardly focused to one side of center and makes me look horribly lop-sided. No, I didn’t take a picture for you. I need to get my seam ripper out and try again with WAY MORE PINS. Lesson learned (again): more pins are always more-better.

I’ve had an on-again off-again relationship with this sewing project. It was going swimmingly when I started it back in April* Then I broke a sewing machine needle trying to install the zipper.

See, my real problem here is I lack a zipper foot for my old sewing machine. So I dread zippers because I have to balance the two pronged foot on top of the hard part of the zipper and try and control everything so it doesn’t slip off. If it slips one way it won’t be sewing the zipper to the fabric anymore. If it slips the other way the needle hits the zipper teeth and breaks. I should probably try and find a zipper foot for the machine, but it’s from the 1950’s and I’m afraid I won’t be able to find parts…

Oh, right, I was actually going to tell you about the process. This dress was inspired by the very warm spring we had. I decided I needed a new sun dress. It’s a mish-mash of two other sewing patterns. The bodice and straps are one pattern, the skirt with the inset is from another.

I decided to line the bodice. Lined bodices are easy (just cut out two of everything!) and make a more finished garment than those silly little facing that never stay in place and disrupt the smooth look of a fitted top. The outer fabric is a fake silk crepe that I’ve had in my stash just about forever. The inner lining is a cotton (ok, it’s a re-purposed bed sheet, got a problem with that?) And the straps and contrasting fabric are a green corduroy also from my deep stash.

I assembled the bodice according to the directions, I assembled the skirt according to its directions. The hard part was combining the two. I just measured the length of the waist at the bottom of the bodice and then found the point on the skirt that was the same length.

This means after sewing the skirt I ended up trimming an inch off the top before attaching it to the bodice. Encasing the raw edge of the skirt inside the lined bodice means there isn’t an exposed seam to be found anywhere in the garment. Or there won’t be when I’m finished. You can see the green trim in that photo. The top edge is stitched to the top of the bodice, then folded down over all the raw edges and the bottom edge is stitched to the outside of the dress. I’ve decided the best way to do that will be with some invisible hand sewing. I’m almost done.

After attaching the skirt and bodice I tried to install the zipper. And that’s when I broke a needle and shoved the whole project to the back corner of my craft table for a month and a half.

But I finally brought it out again. I fixed the zipper issue as best I could and finished the rolled hems on the skirt. The zipper still isn’t pretty, but it’s as invisible as I can get with the tools at hand. And it’s on the side of the dress, so it’s not really very visible.

I hope to finish the hand stitching soon, and then I’ll have finished dress photos for you!

*according to the metadata on the photos…