Saturday, March 7, 2020

Beautiful Misfits


Two of my latest sewing makes, which turned the wrong fit. First the cardigan. This is Think Pink Cosy Cardigan, a free pattern by Love Sewing magazine. I've been hearing a lot about this cardigan from Alisa Shay at Thoughtful Creativity, who's made a couple or more of these knit fabric cardigans. I came upon a beautiful cotton knit with almost no stretch in either direction and I decided it was the perfect fabric for this pattern - and it is. However I messed the sizing.


It is hard to believe, but I spent at least three hours measuring myself, the pattern, watching Alisa's videos, printing, cutting, glueing, shortening and calculating. And in the end I reckoned wrong :( I made the xs size based on my small bust and narrow shoulder measurements, only to find that the cardigan runs small and is tight even on my definitely xs sized daughter. On me it is not un-wearable, but the tightness around the shoulder blades is uncomfortable.I already made a second version of the cardigan, without any shortenings and a size s and it fits much much better. Unfortunately, I don't like its fabric that much, but I'll have to take a few pictures of it and show it some other day.


My second make is the skirt - pattern 112 from BurdaStyle 05 / 2019. This time I was cautious enough to make a sort of a toile - I cut the main pieces of the new skirt from an old gabardine skirt and the pockets and the lining are from an unfinished and abandoned decades ago cotton dress. It was a happy coincidence, that I didn't have enough gabardine for the entire skirt and used a thinner fabric for the pockets and lining and I would replicate that in a future skirt, if I can figure out how to fix the fit.


Here I'm trying to show, that the yoke of the skirt is about 6 cm or more wider at the waist, but it is perfect at the hips and I wouldn't go down a size there. However, as it is, the skirt is almost unwearable, as it slips down and rotates around my waist quite unflattering.


Still, I like the pattern and I think I need more skirts in my life, I just need to fix the fit, maybe shorten it a couple of cm and straighten a tiny bit the A form.

 

The amazing part is that all of these misfitting makes still haven't killed my sewing mojo - I've bought and downloaded a number of patterns, bought the new Burdastyle magazine plus a couple of older issues and my fabric stash is growing with an alarming speed. I need to visit the donations bins soon, to make room for my new makes :)


 


1 comment:

  1. Great job on these pieces. It's nice that you can pass down this lavender one to your daughter and that it won't be wasted.

    ReplyDelete