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Love Notions Rhapsody Blouse, and learning to fit myself.

Well, in the nearly 2 years since I last posted I've been sewing clothes and making quilts, and wishing I kept a blog. Not sure why I therefore haven't blogged except that it's hard to get into the habit of doing something that you don't do.
But! here we are.
I've got the Love Notions Rhapsody blouse on my sewing table, waiting for a hem and cuffs, but I haven't got back into that room for 3 days because it's the end of Summer School and I'm grading, marking, and commenting all the final things. I've had nice kids this year and I'm enjoying the gradual calming down of my days. On Friday I'd disappear into my sewing room and potter about for a few hours of celebration; but actually my mum flies in for a visit so that's not going to happen. I can't wait to see her, but I'm also longing to sew. I think I'll put a comfy chair into the sewing room and invite her down, so I can at least finish some of the less demanding stuff (bord…
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A tale of two wadders, and what I've learned

I know that Burda supposedly drafts for broad back and shoulders, so I should have known that Burda 6680, a nice, simple, building-block princess-seam A-line dress would need more than a basic Narrow Shoulder Alteration. Before cutting a muslin of the bodice I measured the distance between shoulder-seams on the pattern and compared them to my own shoulder-to-shoulder measurement and gulped at the thought of taking out 3 inches. I think I ended up taking out 2 1/2, and stopped because I was worrying about distorting the armscye. 

I didn't do a FBA, because I've not done one before with a princess-seamed bodice,  and so I thought I'd try out the Burda D-cup fit first. I'm around an E cup and so sometimes I need all an FBA, and sometimes I don't.

First of all: the bust-fit is great when I grab the shoulder seams and lift them about 2 inches. Of course, I can't actually do this for reals as a fitting solution, because the armscye disappears into my armpit.

Do I h…
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Lessons learned

I'm not someone who spends a fortune on fabric no - wait. I suspect my budget of leisure spending is heavily sewing-related. Let me re-phrase that. I've never bought any fabric that cost more than about $8 a yard. And $8 is pricey. This makes me feel okay about sewing up muslins (tester garments from fabric as similar to the desired end product as possible), and general less trepidatious about the risk of a complete disaster/wadder. I've only had one "Nope, I will never wear this" wadder, and that was a muslin I made of McCalls 6802. I sewed it up in French terry that I'd tried-and failed- to dye from white to purple. I'd bought the lovely fabric in white dirt cheap, thinking "I'll dye it!" - for some reason, possibly related to how much I mixed, the destined-for-purple yardage was a blotchy mess, but the destined-for-pale blue came out beautifully. The pattern didn't work for me because the cut-on (are they dolman or Kimono?) slee…
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Blank Slate Marigold: FBA queries

I'm still figuring out what to actually DO with all the excess fabric an FBA generates. I lost my nerve on the HP Chameleon muslin (and got annoyed, and got a ton of marking) because while I figured out the Y-Dart FBA and how to tweak the great big dart and manage some added shoulder fabric, the waist was suddenly inches and inches too big for the skirt portion of the dress, and the pattern wasn't supposed to support gathering at the waist, and I couldn't see how/where to add a dart... Now I'm at the adjustment stage of cutting out the blank slate marigold and the instructions cheerfully suggest I won't need an FBA (in my dreams) and then suggests putting the whole lot of added fabric in the shoulder gathers. If it were an inch or two, maybe, but I need to add 3.5 and that's just not going to work, is it? Is it? Stay tuned! I guess I have nothing to lose but the muslin fabric - and precious sewing time.
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"I atent ded"

Well, summer was not at time for sewing. I think fall might be - specially since I need some additions to my work wardrobe, and pronto! Tonight I'm cutting up the free Lekala 3 seam skirt and making a muslin of that, tomorrow night I want to make a muslin of the HotPatterns Chameleon dress (bodice part). After those two things, my next challenge is the bodice muslin for the Marigold dress. I hope the 3 seam skirt works - it looks pretty straightforward (only 3 seams!) and as my biggest fitting hurdle is my pot belly I'm hoping that the lekala fitting algorithms have worked their magic to account for my 'high hip' measurement. Bloggers I think make beautiful things, such as Thornberry, have demonstrated a great fit with this pattern. I'm making mostly dresses and second layers (a Hotpatterns Chimera jacket and a burda soft knit jacket, I think) as work is overly airconditioned and chilly, while summer lingers far into September here in NJ.
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I haven't forgotten this blog, I promise! Summer school is reaching the end of its first week and it has been quite exhausting getting things into gear, but I'm cutting out Hot Patterns' La Strada tee tomorrow night, all being well, and I will take some pics. This pattern looks GREAT! :)
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