I haven’t given up on the mini-wardrobe (yet). I have gotten sidetracked, which is a dangerous thing when you only have a month to work and that’s half gone.

If I could simply stay home and sew, I might finish (or even start). But since I spend time visiting quilt shops, going to ASG meetings, and reading Pattern Reviews and great sewing blogs have a life to lead, I tend to get sidetracked.

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Yesterday I had a wonderful opportunity to visit The Blue Willow Restaurant in Social Circle, Georgia. That place is famous for it’s southern home cooking, and I thoroughly enjoyed the food–fried green tomatoes, biscuits, collard greens, sweet potato casserole, pole beans, fruit salad, biscuits, baked tilapia, coconut cake, biscuits, fried chicken, and did I say biscuits???

The biscuits were the best! They were what my uncles would have called cat head biscuits because they were that big. And they were buttery and perfect–tender, flaky–just the best. My mouth waters as I think of them.

But the food wasn’t the best part.

The company was the best part.

I ate that delicious meal with three women that I had never met before. They are the granddaughters of my grandfather’s sister. (I think that makes us second cousins, according to this treatise.) It was a great pleasure and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We lingered over lunch for quite some time talking about family and ancestors. It was wonderful and a pleasure to recall!

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After that lunch, I could barely waddle back to work and holding my head up was a chore. Later I was recovered enough to think about fitting the Butterick pattern that I bought fabric for last Friday night.

It was Butterick 4986.   I traced off both the long twist top and the tank-style camisole.  I don’t know if I’ll like the long top or not, but it’s different.

Different is good.

I don’t need more of the same stuff I already have.  There is that rut that I would like to occasionally escape, after all.

I wanted to make the version of the top with the collar.  (Some people have a co-dependent relationship with pockets, mine is with collars.)  My fabric is one of those limp crinkly rayons, however, so I decided that it probably didn’t have enough body to support a collar.  When I read over the reviews, I discovered that no one else had reviewed a version with a collar.

Neither will I.

The tank is bias, which will be interesting, I’m sure.  It will be sewn from another color of the chinchilla stuff that I’ve used before.  It should be really pretty when done.  I love the other chichilla top and wear it almost every week.

The fabric is washed and ready.  The pattern is almost fitted.  Maybe I can cut tomorrow.  I have an ASG CAB (chapter advisory board) meeting tomorrow, however, that will take most of the day.

It’s really a shame to have so many opportunities for fun, isn’t it?

Tags: Butterick, Butterick 4986

Photograph not withstanding, this top turned out pretty well and I like it. For some reason my camera wouldn’t focus when I took this yesterday, and all the smiling photos were fuzzier than this.

This is view D, the woven version with the darts and zipper. I haven’t made the knit version–it might be simpler.

The zipper that this pattern calls for is totally ridiculous. It’s not long enough and the application is sloppy. This is a short top–about 19 inches, I’d guess–and the zipper is 18 inches. They have you start it at the top of the collar and there’s a tiny bit at the bottom that is sewn closed, which makes it difficult to pull over your shoulders. Besides that, they have you wrap the ends of the zipper tape over the collar’s seam allowances and stitch them down.

Wha???

That’s ludicrous and I won’t do it. You shouldn’t either, but if you aren’t an experienced sewer, you might not have any idea that it shouldn’t be done that way.

Even I, with 40 years of sewing experience behind me, had a problem figuring out what I wanted to do with it. My top fits too closely to pull over my head with only a back neck opening, but it needed to open at the neckline somehow. It also needed to open at the hem.

I moved the back zipper to the left side seam with the top of the zipper at the hemline (upside down). I put a 4-inch opening at the back neckline, too. The top is still hard to get in and out of. The back opening could be 1/2-inch longer–if I’m not careful it scrubs the make-up off my face when I pull it over my head.

I like the underarm zipper that opens from the bottom–that gives lots of room. I wasn’t quite sure how to finish it off at the bottom, however, as I had never sewn a zipper in this configuration. I did a lapped application and simply stitched across the bottom of the zipper tape to hold it in place. The pattern calls for slits at the sideseams, so I left the appropriate amount open below the zipper.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with it. This is my first muslin, and it’s wearable. My tissue fitting skills are coming along nicely!

My inclination is to make another immediately, but I’ve got a little ASG project to finish first. If I do get back to this pattern, I’ll consider making that mock opening really open and snap down the side seam.

How hard could it be?

Tags: Simplicity, Simplicity 5098

Saturday my neighborhood ASG group took a field trip to Dragonfly Quilt Shop in Watkinsville. I don’t quilt, you know that. Some of our members do, and they were understandably interested in all the quilt “stuff” on display there. I was interested in the cotton fabrics, especially in finding something suitable for Butterick 5186, which I mentioned on Saturday.

The first thing I saw when I walked in the door was a gorgeous jacket on a mannequin. (I wish I had taken a photo.) It was made from black and white fabrics and was absolutely stunning!

The best I can do without making a trip back over there, is show you the pattern envelope and describe it.  OK?  It was short, like the example on the left.  The fabrics were arranged like the one on the right.

The quilt shop jacket had a large black and white floral as the main fabric, and a smaller, dense black and white print where the solid tan is in the photo.  The buttons were distinctive, although I can’t remember them well enough to describe them.  I believe the buttons were paired–where the pattern envelope shows one, the quilt shop jacket had two.

If I wore black, I would have snapped up the exact fabrics without hesitation and ran home with them.  It was that perfect.

Looking at this photo, I see something that I didn’t see on quilt shop jacket:  the way the front hikes up in the center. I don’t know if the shop’s artist corrected the problem, or if the display mannequin was simply less curvy than these.  Of course most of those square, ethnic-style garments do this on curvy figures.  I’ve see plenty of examples constructed of expensive materials by fine sewers that don’t hang level.  It’s a characteristic of the style that I, personally, could not tolerate.

I don’t suppose it’s bothersome on a garment that hangs open, although you might have to tug it back into place from time to time.  Perhaps there wouldn’t be much tugging when the jacket is worn by a person with erect posture.

On a person with less-than-erect posture, the garment would fall backward continually.  If the garment was designed to be worn closed, as this is, the person would be choked–over and over again.  The lovely jacket, made with care of fine fabrics, would be banished to Goodwill.  Thankfully, I would be forced by my OCD to make alterations to the tissue until I got it level all round.

It would look a lot better, too.

Imagine the short jacket in a lovely purple batik with bands of pink and purple floral…

and a level hemline.

No tag for this post.

Conservative. <<sigh>> I’m afraid that is me–in speech, dress, and manners.

I definitely prefer that private body parts be kept private–both mine and others’. I really don’t want to look across the table in a meeting (or Sunday school) and see cleavage or your bare stomach. In a restaurant or at a party, it may be different, but I still don’t want my gaze drawn to someone else’s bare body parts.

We had a woman come for a job interview showing about 75% of her breasts. Every time I glanced in her direction I had to remember to look at the ceiling first then slowly lower my gaze to her face. It was mega-distracting, especially for the men. (They said so.  We even discussed who would have to speak to her about her wardrobe should we hire her.)

Of course you can dress less conservatively without showing more skin. (I think.)

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here or not, but one of the things I’ve been doing lately is taking a photograph of myself each day before I leave the house. Sometimes I’m missing lipstick or glasses, but it’s usually pretty complete and gives me a good idea of what I actually looked like that day.

Some days I can tell that I should never wear a particular combo again.  My white belt, for instance, should never be worn over anything but white.

Now, besides just checking for flattering silhouettes, I’m thinking “What would make this outfit less conservative???”

No tag for this post.

Happiness. Much.

I began a wearable muslin of Simplicity 5098 over the weekend. Although the zipper/collar application leaves a lot to be desired, I’m very pleased with it up to this point. My alterations are almost perfect, and that’s enough in and of itself to make me happy.

This is from a quilter’s cotton that I really like a lot and I think the print suits the style. Mr H hasn’t seen this, although I doubt it would rate a comment. I’ll let you know if it does and we’ll see if any of our theories hold true. (My personal opinion is that the favorable comment last week had to do with the blouse being pink.)

I expect to rip that zipper and try again before I sew up the side seams. They have you wrapping the zipper tape over the seam allowances and stitching it down. Not on my blouse, thank you. I’m sure I can come up with something neater than that! I’m thinking that I might change the back neckline to a slit and put the zipper under my left arm opening bottom up.

I can see me making this again in different configurations. You could easily lose that mock front opening and make this a plain shell. For that matter, you could make that mock thing really open and lose the back zipper.

Next time.

For now, I just want to get it finished and wear it.

Tags: Simplicity, Simplicity 5098