Wednesday 9 March 2016

shelving my UFO Lilly Rose floral dress

Last Saturday I went to the sewing guild group and took my Lilly Rose ufo, and the December dress.

Yes, December dress is still unfinished in March! No progress pics because it has zero hanger appeal. It looks like a shapeless sack with cute pockets. I hate pockets, but the collar on the dress will look ridiculous without the pockets.  On Saturday I moved up the 3/4 waist belt up to a more flattering place and shortened it as I'd marked. The new placement is ideal BUT the carpenter's mantra of measure twice, cut once holds true for sewing.  As I shortened the waist belt I did think "huh, that's quite a bit" and lo, behold it was far too short ... an 8" gap in the back. What was I thinking? I realised I marked the wrong end of the belt pieces. So I need to recut, stitch and re-insert them. I got some 1cm or narrower bias tape for the sleeve hem, and 1.5cm bias tape for the hem itself. Oh, make the collar pieces too. Plus I need to cut a neck facing - the pattern says to use self bias but I'm not going there.  I should finish it this month HAH.

The Lilly Rose is a bust. I finished the second side seam, inserting the zip so that I could try it on. Whatever issues I had with cutting it out that included having to let out skirt seams so the skirt wasn't too narrow for the waist yoke, well it's too tight overall so grabby in the wrong way. The only fix I can think of is to unpick the skirt/yoke seam, lower the top edge of the skirt (so it's wider), reshape the panels so the top edge fits the yoke but the hip is wider and get more contrast fabric to add a border to the hem.  TBH I'm just not feeling the love after all the hassle. I want a pretty new dress that doesn't have so much UGH and potty mouth associated with it.

The January dress hasn't even been mocked up. I'm staring at the front bodice pieces going umm, full bust alteration how?  Need to mock up and finesse that but I'm needing something easier than that right now.  No more fiddling and trying to fix things.

I compared my (unblogged cos I haven't even mocked up January's) February dress pattern to a blouse pattern that fits and all I need to do is the FBA and get cracking. Oh and raise the underarm level by half an inch, but not the bodice length cos YAY half sizes!

I also bought another vintage half size pattern on The eBay a couple of weeks ago, and it's just as cute. I see it in my future ... if only I can cure my procrastination. but hey, I'm no longer anaemic after an iron injection in my "hip" that for the next week felt like I'd been kicked in the *ahem* by a mule. Is this going to be my March dress?


Okay, I've stopped buying fabric and aiming to use stash, stash and more stash.  However today I bought another half size vintage dress pattern. This time on Etsy ... I love that half sizes fit plus I love vintage cuteness so I'm sure that I'll be getting more of them. I like the mail order brands eg Anne Adams or Marion Martin because they're very much RTW rather than high fashion.