So, now that it's fall again I started in on the muslin, in an attempt to continue the fitting process.
I made one bad mistake - which was using a water-erase marker to transfer some markings. Water erase disappears if you leave it a few months wadded up in a corner with all the other UFOs. Somehow, up became down & without realizing it I stitched a few things on upside down, and then fitted like a mad woman
How do Mad Women fit?
- Baste
- Try on
- Pin out excess
- Poke myself with pins, use muslin scraps as bandages
- Curse a lot, drink some tea
- Mark new lines
- Rip out old seam
Like I said, I'm smaller. However, I'm still lazy. So, I didn't rip it all apart & alter everything down. I decided I'd FIT out the 20 lbs.
I ended up with a strange looking garment - with mis-matched panels at the waistline. Hmmm, I know I'm smaller, so I decided they needed to be smaller, and shrank them all down. I did this despite the fact that I looked carefully at the pattern and saw that it's the side seams where the sizes really differ. I ended up with this mess:
I recognized that the lines of the garment center panel were not the same as the line drawings or other people's patterns. So, tonight I ripped it all apart to re-size correctly. As soon as I did this, I saw what went wrong - I sewed the waistband on UPSIDE DOWN. The waistband is really an extension of the bodice, and should continue to taper inwards. Instead, mine was inverted, and grew towards the waist - which I then tried to fit out. But, the center panel was attached with the smallest side up - and so I shrank the entire dress around it. Oops.
Here's the fixed waistband - you can see that there is a significant curve to it, and my red fitting marks from when it was upside down are still visible on the center panel. I think the whole garment will lie much better once I alter the rest and put it in correctly.
We'll see what I can come up with the second (or 22nd) time around, after shrinking all the pieces down to a size 16.
