Planning (and Overthinking) a Style Arc Nova Midi Dress

Hello, my Lovelies, and Happy Summer (to everyone in the Northern hemisphere)!  Happy Independence Day Weekend to everyone in the United States!  Today's post is going to contain zero quilting, because my creative brain is chasing a different rabbit today.  I don't have enough "Florida Clothing" in my closet and I hate the way everything looks/feels/fits that I've tried on in stores.  My sister bought me a couple dress patterns that I've had on my wish list for awhile and I've decided to sew up the Nova Midi Dress from the Australian indie pattern company Style Arc  (this post contains affiliate links).

One of the coolest things about garment sewing in the Internet age is that it's so easy to find pictures, reviews, tips and tweaks suggestions from people of all shapes, sizes, and ages who have already sewn up the pattern you're considering.  The photo montage above shows two images of the dress sewn up from the Style Arc web site (the long orange dress with 3 tiers and the short black dress with 2 tiers), but the other images came from sewing blogs and a 3rd party online shop based in the U.K. (Minerva) that sells this dress pattern as a kit in a variety of fabrics.  So, special thanks to Carolyn of Sewing Fanatic, No Idle Hands, Geri In Stitches, Indoor Shannon, and the many other makers who take the time to post their sewing finishes online along with feedback and suggestions so that others can learn from their experiences.

Fabulous Fit Dress Form Review, Part One: Great System, But I Ordered the Wrong Size

I have made up my mind, rather recently, that I am going to learn to sew clothing that fits me properly. After years of frustrating shopping trips, trying on stacks of clothing in fitting rooms and coming home with only very stretchy knits or very formless, oversized styles and then hating everything in my closet, I have finally decided to put in the time to learn the techniques of garment sewing -- and, crucially, learning how to adjust commercial patterns for a custom fit.  I believe we can all look better and feel better in our clothing when it fits us properly, regardless of our various sizes and shapes. 

So last Spring, just before my bicycle accident, I signed up for a slew of fitting classes at the Atlanta Sewing & Quilting Expo.  One of the seminars I attended was Joe Vecchiarelli's Dress Form Fitting class, where he demonstrated how to pad a standard dress form to match the unique size AND shape of the person for whom you are sewing. 


Joe Vecchiarelli Customizing a Dress Form

Joe asked for a volunteer who didn't mind having her measurements called out for everyone to hear, so I raised my hand to be the guinea pig.  He used a polyester batting (shown in the photo above) in areas where he wanted to add width all the way around the dress form, along with contoured pads from Fabulous Fit where he needed to add curves to specific areas such as shoulders, bust, an upper back Dowager's hump, tummy, thighs, etc. 



With this system, you order a non-adjustable dress form according to your SMALLEST horizontal body measurement, and then pad up the areas where you need to make it larger.  You can use the Fabulous Fit pads with any company's dress form to achieve a more custom fit, and you can easily add or remove pads or shift their positioning on the dress form as your figure changes over time, or if you are sewing for people of various sizes and shapes.



Dritz Adjustable Dress Form

This system has several advantages over the more common adjustable dress forms that are widely available.  First, the custom padded dress form is completely pinnable for draping, whereas the adjustable dress forms have gaps the size of the Grand Canyon once the measurements are dialed out.  Second, when you adjust the bust dial on an adjustable dress form for a larger bust, it doesn't just increase the bust -- it increases the upper chest and back as well.  Third, although you can increase and decrease the width of an adjustable dress form at key points such as the bust, waist and hips, you cannot raise or lower those positions to reflect a petite or tall torso, or a lower bust line.  So even though you may be able to set the dials on an adjustable dress form to match your measurements at the bust, waist, and hips, the dress form won't help you much if her bust line is too high or if she has a wide, FLAT tummy and you have a narrow, ROUNDED tummy.  The whole point of a dress form is to approximate your body (or your customer or fit model's body, if you sew professionally) as closely as possible, so it makes sense to look for a dress form that can mimic the body's contours as closely as possible.

The area where I personally have the most fitting issues is the upper chest and shoulders.  I have a narrow frame with broad, square shoulders, coupled with a larger bust that is hell-bent on going to visit my belly button thanks to gravity, the passage of time, and Childbirth Wreckage.  So any time I try on a readymade fitted dress or blouse in a store, I get horrible horizontal wrinkles across the bust line and buttons straining, threatening to pop off and take someone's eye out, but if I go up enough sizes to fit the bust, I find that I am swimming in an ocean of excess fabric through the upper chest and back and I look like I am wearing a sack.  The side seams generally pull towards the front as well, because size large and extra-large assumes that one is bigger all the way around, not just in the front.  What's more, now that I have been dragged (reluctantly, kicking and screaming) into my forties, I find that I have NEW curves to contend with below the waistline: a tummy bulge that refuses to go away no matter how much I exercise and a bit more padding on my thighs and caboose. 

So I ordered my Fabulous Fit Studio Dress Form back in November, when I was working on my Victorian Christmas caroling costume.  I ordered a size 10, which was the size dress form that Joe recommended for me in his seminar based on my bust, waist, and hip measurements, which are between 1-2" larger than the dimensions of the size 10 form.  I was so frantic about getting that caroling costume done and then got caught up in the holiday rush, so I didn't get around to trying to customize the form to match my body until last week.

With the Fabulous Fit dress form system, you begin by stretching a tight-fitting knit fabric cover over your dress form from top to bottom, inserting padding between the dress form and the cover at key points as you go.  I started by adding shoulder pads to my dress form and then used the bust pads along with contour pads to increase the bust dimension and lower the bust line.  As I positioned these pads, I checked to be sure that the bust span matched mine (wider than the dress form's) as well as the bust height (lower than the dress form's). 

In unflattering photo above (deliberately NOT holding in my tummy) it looks like I lowered the bust line too much, but in reality it's pretty much spot-on.  Note that you can ONLY successfully lower the bust line if your dress form's bust is SMALLER than yours initially, because you lower the bust by placing the bust pads just beneath the fullest part of the dress form's bust, and this automatically adds to the bust dimension.  You can raise or lower the waist line in the same way to create a petite or tall torso, as long as the dress form's waist line is smaller than yours, by erasing her waistline with pads and creating a new waistline in the correct position to match your body.  So far, so good, or so I thought. 

At this point in the process, I took the mannequin's upper chest measurement (above the bust, under the armpits) and discovered that she measured close to 36" there, whereas I am only 33 1/2" in the upper chest.  Ugh!  I hadn't added any padding to the dress form in this area, so there was no way for me to make it any smaller.  Worse than the upper chest discrepancy was the dress form's shape below the waist line, however.  Yes, the waist and hip measurements of the dress form are between 1-2" smaller than my measurements, but as you can see, she has a totally FLAT tummy and no derriere, whereas my body has definite rounded protrusions in these areas.  When I put the contoured Fabulous Fit foam pads on the dress form in the correct areas to mimic those curves, her overall hip measurement grew to several inches LARGER than mine.  That was when I realized that the size 10 dress form was just not going to work for me at all.

Rear View, Me and the Size 10 Dress Form

I know you can't really see my behind very well in the black pants (this is by design!), but you can definitely see that the dress form isn't narrow enough in the under bust area and although her butt is too flat, her hips are too wide and the small of her back is not as concave as mine.  This is why the waistline of my jeans always gaps at the back.  Looking at this picture now, I see that I made the dress form's shoulders too square with those shoulder pads, so I will need to correct that to match the true angle of my shoulders.  (And yes, I AM standing straight in that photo; I have a crooked body and one of my shoulders is higher than the other). 

I spoke with Customer Service at Fabulous Fit and they agreed to exchange my dress form for a smaller size.  I sent them my measurements along with photos from all angles so they could get a better idea of why the size 10 form wasn't working for me, and they recommended that I go with a size 6 dress form and with additional padding for the bust area.  Their size 6 dress form measures 33 5/8" in the upper chest, where I measure 33 1/2", which is pretty darned close.  That way she'll be small enough in the upper chest, back, and waist, and I should be able to give her a rounded, mommy-loves-chocolate-tummy and a rounded caboose without her waist and hip dimensions ending up too large. 

Meanwhile, the moral of this story is that you can only make a dress form LARGER with pads, not smaller.  If you're in doubt about which size dress form to order, go with the SMALLER size.  Take ALL of your measurements, not just the bust, waist, and hips, and choose the SMALLEST dress form size that corresponds to at least one of your measurements.  If you are bigger than a B or C bra cup, your upper chest measurement is probably the one to go with.  If you need to lower the bust line for a more mature, gravity-affected silhouette as so many of us do, then it's even more important that the dress form's bust measures several inches smaller than yours.  Another way to think of this is that the dress form needs to match your skeletal frame because we all carry our weight differently.  If you are slender with a narrow rib cage and you gain 20 or 30 pounds, your horizontal dimensions increase but your underlying bone structure remains the same.  As long as your dress form matches your skeletal frame you can always add padding wherever it's needed to match your changing silhouette and the unique distribution of your body weight, but if the dress form isn't small enough to begin with you have no room to add your personal bumps and bulges.

I do like this dress form system so far.  Even though it turned out that the size 10 dress form won't match my body, I can see that the Fabulous Fit pads on a smaller form are going to enable me to mimic my shape much more accurately than any adjustable dress form could ever do.  And yes, I know that I could have a custom dress form made to match my measurements for a small fortune, but what if I finally lose a few pounds, or gain a few more?  I am aware of the low-cost DIY duct tape dress forms that were featured in Threads magazine a few years ago, but I wanted something with a sturdy base that wouldn't knock over, something that would look nice in my studio when it's not in use.  I also didn't want to be sticking pins through duct tape, looking at duct tape, or trying to drape fabric on a slippery duct tape surface.  I'm looking forward to trying this process again with the Fabulous Fit pads once I receive the smaller dress form, and I'll be sure to do a follow-up post to let you know how that works out.

Do you use a dress form?  If so, which kind?  Have you used Fabulous Fit pads or any other system to customize your dress form to your own size and shape?  Let me know what did and didn't work for you in the comments. Happy Stitching!

A NEW Quilt Top On My Design Wall, and a Smidgeon of Skirt Progress

New Quilt Top Finished: "Math Is Beautiful"

Since I am currently in the middle of three different quilts AND a skirt project, I decided to ignore all of them and start something new this weekend.  Remember the doodle I found in Lars's math notebook at the end of last school year?  Ta-da!  This is the fastest quilt top I have ever made!  After putzing around for weeks trying to get the fit just right on my skirt pattern, and months and months of working on my hand applique project, I just felt like I needed something quick and easy thrown into my mix.  This is baby quilt sized, 45" x 45" right now, and just needs borders.  I'll probably stow it away in a closet until the next time I need to come up with a baby shower gift.  I got the top pieced on my 1935 Singer Featherweight in just two afternoons, leaving the Bernina 750 set up in skirt-making mode.  

Piecing on my 1935 Singer Featherweight

Not that changing the presser foot, needle and thread on the B 750 is that much of a big deal to do -- but psychologically it would imperil my chances of seeing the skirt project through to the end.  And I DO want to finish the skirt.  Which technically, I still haven't started yet since I'm still playing with muslin and pattern tissue and haven't touched the fashion fabric...  But I am getting closer to starting my skirt!

Earlier last week I was trying to make a muslin of my silly skirt (New Look #6708, OOP) to make sure I was sewing the right size, and I discovered that the contoured waistband didn't fit me very well in ANY of the pattern sizes.  I tried cutting the waistband so that it was a size 14 at the top of the band and a size 12 at the bottom of the band, and as you can see in the pictures that got me a good fit with no ripples, but created weirdness at the side seams:

Hybrid Size 14/12 Waistband Muslin

My mom suggested that I should leave it alone because I probably won't tuck a shirt into the skirt anyway.  NO WAY!  It's not even about leaving it alone, because this is just a muslin.  It would be deliberately cutting into $78 worth of fashion fabric and spending hours of my precious time to make something that I knew would look so wonky and misshapen that I would never in a million years have paid $5 for it on clearance.  I am not going to waste my time sewing a skirt that I know I would be embarrassed to wear.

So I used my French curve ruler to redraw the curves at the top and bottom edges of the waistband pattern pieces, making sure to keep the waistband a consistent width all the way around with exactly the same curve at the top edge as at the bottom edge, and working with seam lines first and then adding the 5/8" seam allowances back in:

Redrafting with French Curve Ruler

I just barely had enough time to sew up a muslin of my new waistband before we left for the theatre, which is why I'm trying it on over top of my dress:

New and Improved Waistband Muslin, Front View

No More Wonky Side Seam!

Yay!  That's a pretty custom fit, wouldn't you say?  Pardon the poor quality of the photos -- my husband was yelling at me to hurry up and get in the car.  Anyway, I am happy with the fit of the new waistband, and my next step will be to make sure that I didn't inadvertently alter the length of the seam line where the waistband attaches to the body of the skirt.  Theoretically, since the bottom edge of my new waistband is size 12, the size 12 skirt should be a perfect fit -- but I might as well check to be sure before cutting into the good fabric.  I just didn't feel like doing it this weekend. 

Maybe tomorrow!  I'm linking up with Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts, Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times, Sew Darn Crafty at Sew Many Ways,Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts, Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story, and Show and Tell Tuesday at I Have to Say. 

Silk Serendipity and Skirt Stymied, Stagnating

FrankenWhiggish Rose Meets YLI Silk Thread

Happy Friday, everyone!  It's been a mixed week in my sewing world, so let's start with the good, shall we?  After breaking my left thumb and right collar bone in a bicycle accident on March 22nd, I was able to resume my FrankenWhiggish Rose needleturn applique project this week.  Yay!  I still can't bend that thumb normally and it hurts too much if I try to use my left thumb and pointer finger to precrease the applique shapes along the stitching line, but I can do that with my right hand.  A mere fourteen weeks after breaking my thumb, I can finally use it enough to manage hand stitching again.  I never before realized how important it was to be able to pinch and hold the folded fabric edge with my left hand in order to successfully stitch with my right hand.  And it feels really good to have a relaxing slow-stitching project in my lap again in the evenings and when I'm away from my sewing room.

Oren Bayan Mercerized Cotton Machine Embroidery Thread

However, what has NOT been fun or relaxing is the way-too-frequent thread breaks I've been experiencing, and that was happening before the accident, too.  For my first needleturn applique blocks (for my not-yet-finished Jingle BOM quilt) I was using spools of Oren Bayan, a Turkish mercerized cotton machine embroidery thread collection that I bought by mistake on eBay several years ago.  That worked pretty well for me, but I have not been able to find that brand in the U.S. and I didn't have good color matches for my FrankenWhiggesh Rose fabrics.  So I purchased Mettler 60/2 fine cotton machine embroidery thread instead, which looks pretty much the same as the Oren Bayan to my naked eye.  But, for whatever reason, it's breaking and snarling ferociously on me despite generous applications of Thread Heaven conditioner, and the thread breaks are really slowing me down.

I know that some people do use Mettler 60/2 cotton thread successfully for hand applique, but I also know that I tend to make really tiny stitches when I get my groove going (some have told me that my stitches are TOO small) and that means that my length of thread might be pulled through the fabric twice as many times as it might be for someone else.  I'm pretty sure that my thread breakage is due to my Mettler thread not being strong enough to withstand that repeated stress and friction.  I briefly considered that my needle might be the culprit, either due to a microscopic burr in the eye of the needle or friction at the eye from a too-small needle eye for the thread diameter, but if either of those scenarios were to blame I would be seeing thread breaks happening right at the eye.  I'm using a length of thread roughly the length of my forearm, and I'm having my thread break approximately halfway to two-thirds of the way in after I've taken at least a hundred tiny stitches without a break.  The kinking and snarling tendency happens throughout stitching.

My Successful Applique Combo: YLI #100 Silk Thread and Size 12 Bohin Applique Needles

I'm not about to go to a heavier thread like a 50/3 cotton, because I want my stitches to remain invisible.  Instead, I decided to try YLI Silk #100, which is the preferred thread of Jeanne Sullivan and many other (though not all!) applique experts.  As with the Oren Bayan thread, no one carries the YLI Silk thread locally, but there are a lot of online sources for YLI.  I ordered a selection of colors from Uncommon Threads, which is located right around the corner from me in Rock Hill, South Carolina, so I got my thread pretty quickly via USPS.  After experimenting with a lot of different needles for applique, I've settled on the Bohin applique needles (thin enough to leave tiny holes and precisely placed stitches, but stronger than the milliners or straw needles which constantly bend and even snap on me).  The size 12 Bohin applique needle is a perfect match to the YLI Silk #100 thread, and when I tested this combo last night I was in stitching heaven.  It feels very different to stitch with silk thread because it is SO slippery smooth -- I'm used to the way the cotton thread kind of grabs the fabric with each stitch.  However, I had zero kinks, zero knots, and zero thread breaks -- which means zero profanity and a happier household.  One annoyance with silk thread is its tendency to slide right out of the needle and unthread itself constantly, but I used a trick that I read about somewhere, threading the eye of the needle and then looping around and threading it again from the same direction.  That worked really well for me. 

So, one sewing problem solved for me this week.  Hooray!  I'd love to tell you that my skirt project was coming along just as nicely, but...

Tracing Skirt Pattern onto Pellon Sew-In Interfacing

The first thing I did was to carefully trace all three of my OOP (Out of Print) New Look #2708 skirt pattern pieces (in what I THOUGHT was my size) for my skirt onto nonfusible Pellon interfacing.  I did this to avoid cutting the original pattern in case I wanted to make a different size after sewing up the muslin, or in case I want to make the pattern in another size several years from now.  I'm glad I took the time to do that -- the interfacing pattern is a lot sturdier than the flimsy pattern tissue anyway and if I like the finished skirt, my traced pattern will easily stand up to repeated use for multiple projects. 

Traced Pattern Pieces, Ready to Go

I traced the pattern pieces with pencil, by the way.  I considered using fine point Sharpie or another ink pen so I could see the lines and markings more clearly, but it bled right through the interfacing and the underlying pattern tissue, and the last thing I need is Sharpie marks all over my butcher block worktable surface!  Then I used those pattern pieces to cut out my skirt from cheap cotton muslin fabric.  I started sewing the mock up skirt together according to the pattern instructions, and I panicked when it came time to sew the waistband to the top of the skirt because the two fabric edges did not seem to be matching up. 

Yikes!  Why Is There Extra Fabric???

There seemed to be a LOT more fabric along the waistband edge (or the "yoke," as the pattern instructions call this piece) than there was along the edge of the skirt to which it should be sewn.  Could this be a pattern drafting mistake, or something I did wrong in construction?  All I had done so far was sewn the side seams on the skirt and on the waistband, and I sewed those seams at a precise 5/8" as per the pattern instructions.  When I texted this picture to my mom, she said that it was possible that my stay stitching at the top edge of the skirt pieces had drawn that layer in imperceptibly.  But I did not see ANY visible puckering when I was stay stitching.  Well, part of the reason for the test garment was to figure out how to construct the skirt, so I decided to pin the two pieces together within an inch of their lives, sew the seam, and then evaluate it afterwards.  I am familiar with sewing a concurve piece to a convex piece from my Drunkard's Path quilt blocks, but quilt piecing uses 1/4" seams instead of the 5/8" seams in this pattern.  It made sense to me that even if the opposite curved pieces matched perfectly at the seam line, the wider seam allowances could cause it to look like one piece was too long for the other at the cut fabric edge.  So I pinned the two layers together very closely, matching the notches, right side seam, center front and center back, and I carefully sewed them together.

Pins, Pins, and More Pins

Now, I pinned these pieces together and sewed them according to the pattern instructions, with the waistband piece on top, like this: 

However, when I sewed those drunkard's path blocks together, I put the convex outer curved piece on the bottom and then pinned the concave inner curved piece on top.  I think that was a lot easier to pin and sew accurately.  Does anyone know of any reason why I shouldn't sew my skirt the same way -- with the contoured waistband piece on the bottom, next to the feed dogs, and the concave curved top edge of the skirt pinned to fit along the edge on top of the skirt?  I'm going to pin it just like I did in the photo above, and I do have Dual Feed on my Bernina 750 sewing machine, if that makes a difference (I know some people like to sew with any fullness on the bottom so the feed dogs can help ease it in).  The curved seam came out just fine regardless, but when I tried on the muslin skirt to check the fit --


Custom Fit?  Hah!

UGH!  YUCK!!!  It is so big that it's in danger of falling off -- unless I wear it with suspenders.  Keep in mind that the skirt is supposed to sit 1" below my natural waistline, even higher than I was holding it in the photo.  Yes, I remembered to press the edges of the skirt opening in 5/8" on each side, and it's still ginormous. 

So, half hoping this was evidence that I had lost weight since I'd measured myself, I grabbed my tape measure and measured my waist AGAIN.  I still got 30", the same as last time, which is a size 16 according to the pattern sizing chart.  So why is the skirt so HUGE??! 
Obviously this means I should make the skirt in a smaller size, and it's a good thing I made the muslin first, but it still bothers me that the skirt is so big because now I have zero confidence in my ability to use a tape measure.  If I had chosen a pattern size by my hip measurement instead of by the waist, I'd have made the skirt in a size 14.  But I don't know -- this test skirt is SO big.  Will a 14 be that much smaller?  Should I make a 12?  I did pull the tape measure snug when I measured, but does the pattern company expect you to suck in your gut and hold your breath, and pull that tape measure as tight as a tourniquet?

The only good news from this muslin misfortune is that I'm pretty sure the skirt has enough fullness for my cotton voile fabric to hang nicely.  I wasn't sure based on the pattern photo and I was a little concerned that my lightweight voile might hang too limply if there wasn't enough fullness at the bottom of the skirt.  I think the length will be good, too, when the top of the skirt is up where it belongs and the hem is turned up at the bottom.

SO...  I'm going to wait until my Mom comes over tomorrow to find out what size SHE thinks I should make.  Mom to the rescue yet again!

Meanwhile, back to my hand stitching!  I'm linking up Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts, Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, as well as with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, because Sarah is a sweetie and she understands that sometimes we need encouraging feedback (and advice!) even more when we're struggling than we do when we finally hit that finish line with a completed project to show off.  For those of you in the United States, happy Independence Day weekend!

S-L-O-W-L-Y Starting the Skirt Project, Research and Discovery Phase

Making A Start: The Package Is Opened!

Ten days ago, I announced my plans to make myself a skirt.  See how much I have accomplished so far?  I actually bought my cotton voile print skirt fabric, solid navy cotton voile lining fabric, invisible zipper, thread, and twill tape over a month ago.  Then I spent several weeks procrastinating researching and agonizing over:

1. Whether and how to prewash my fabrics
2. What kind of interfacing to use for the waistband of the skirt 
3. What size should I cut out

I know my mom is going to laugh when she reads this.  She would have started cutting and sewing immediately and finished the skirt in a day.  I, on the other hand, need to research, ponder, mull, consult the Internet, and only THEN can I proceed.  Since I have only ever made one garment that ended up wearable (and I was disappointed with the fit), I started by purchasing a new book to teach me the basics.  I picked the Threads Magazine Sewing Guide because, having subscribed to Threads in the past, I know that Threads is all about garment sewing as an art form, with the goal of achieving couture quality garments with the best fit possible.  The frustrating thing about trying to learn to sew from a monthly magazine is that each issue has a random assortment of articles that never seem to mesh with the project I have in mind.  So, for instance, I have studied articles on how to contour princess seams, underlining with silk organza, and how to do a hand-picked zipper from reading Threads magazine, but I don't know what to do first when I open a new pattern.  The Threads Sewing Guide seems to be a compilation of articles from the magazine, but arranged logically so that a beginner like me can start reading at the beginning and know what to do.





The Skirt Pattern: New Look 6708

At this point I should probably explain that my goal for this project is not to have another skirt in my closet.  I already have a bunch of skirts in my closet, and if I really needed another one I could go to the store and buy one faster and probably for less money than it will cost me to make this one myself: $5 pattern, $45 for 3 yds of floral print fabric, $1.50 zipper, $1.30 twill tape, $3.35 thread, $17.25 for 3 yards of lining fabric, and $4.30 for an 8-yard bolt of fusible interfacing that I got with a 50% off coupon...  It is costing me about $78 to make this skirt.  Gone are the days of sewing for thrift!  But the skirt is not the goal, and saving money on a skirt is not the goal.  The whole point of making this skirt is to teach myself garment sewing on a simple project that is easy to fit, so I can learn the basics of reading and following a pattern and constructing a garment from start to finish, and then work my way up to more difficult garments like blouses and dresses -- again, not to save money, but because I have a horrible time finding anything in the stores that fits me well.  I took some great classes on pattern alterations and fitting when I went to Atlanta in March for the Sewing & Quilt Expo, but I think I need to get more comfortable with the basics before I tackle something that will require pattern alterations.  I want to take my time, learn as much as I can from this skirt, and do everything in my power to ensure that this garment is a "win" -- meaning that it fits well and looks good enough that, if it was a ready-made item in a store, I would have liked it enough to purchase it.

The Fabric: Pretty Potent Echinachea on Cotton Voile

So in answer to Quandary #1, yes, I did prewash my fabrics, both the print fashion fabric and the lining fabric.  They are 100% cotton voile fabrics of slightly different weights, so two concerns: First of all, when I establish the finished length of this skirt, I want that to be the REAL finished length of the skirt.  I do not want it to shrink two inches the first time I wash it.  Second, what if the print fashion fabric shrank more than the lining fabric and I ended up with the lining hanging out at the bottom of the skirt?  That actually happened to me with a ready-to-wear skirt from Ann Taylor, and after shortening the lining and having the top layer of the skirt CONTINUE to shrink, I finally added crochet lace to the skirt hem to make up the difference.  But since I'm going to all the bother of sewing this skirt myself, it's worth the extra trouble to preshrink the fabric before cutting into it.  I washed the fabrics in the machine with the Very Warm temperature setting and dried them in the dryer.  I plan to wash the finished skirt in cold water and line dry.

As for Quandary #2...  My pattern calls for fusible interfacing, period.  As if there was only one kind of fusible interfacing out there, and everyone knows where to get it.  Hah!  There must have been twenty different kinds of fusible interfacing at JoAnn's, some of it tissue-thin, others that were stiff and reminded me of heavy weight cutaway machine embroidery stabilizer.  How am I supposed to know which one to use?  I consulted several different sources for this one.  According to my Threads book, the general rule of thumb is that you want to use an interfacing that is similar in weight or lighter weight than your fashion fabric.  That helps.  But then I consulted another great book, Sandra Betzina's More Fabric Savvy, which lists today's common garment fabrics alphabetically and gives sewing recommendations for each of them.  Betzina has a section in the book for Batiste & Voile, and she recommends interfacing with self-fabric.  Hunh?  But my pattern says FUSIBLE interfacing!  I consulted another resource, Shannon Gifford's sewing tutorial for Voile at EmmaOneSock (one of my favorite online garment fabric shops).  Gifford says, "If you prefer to use a fusible interfacing, use the thinnest fusible available... However, the best interfacing for this fabric is a coordinating solid colored silk organza."  When I went to JoAnn's for interfacing, they did not have any coordinating silk organza, and the lightest weight fusible interfacing they had was a Pellon Ultra Lightweight Fusible Interfacing By the Bolt.  It's 100% polyester and the care instructions are machine wash warm, tumble dry and warm iron.  Fortunately, I bought a little more fabric than the pattern called for, so I'll be able to experiment.  I'll try both ways, fusible interfacing and self-fabric interfacing, and see which one looks and feels better.

Fitting Class with Lorraine Henry

And finally, Quandary #3, which size do I cut out?  Well, the reason I picked a loose-fitting skirt for this project is that it should be fairly easy to fit, just as long as I go by my waist measurement when deciding what size to cut out.  Easy enough, right?  As long as I know WHERE MY WAIST IS...  I learned from Lorraine Henry's fitting classes to tie a piece of elastic around my middle and then bend at the waist from side to side, forwards and backwards.  The elastic naturally settles at the elusive Natural Waistline (nowhere near where the waist of today's clothing is generally located) and THAT'S where you take your waist measurement.  No sucking in your abs, just relax those tummy muscles or the skirt will be way too tight and I won't want to wear it!  I got 30 1/4" for my waist measurement, and then I looked at the back of the pattern envelope and saw that a 30" waist is a size 16 and a 32" waist is a size 18.  Panic!!  That can't be right!  The skirts in my closet that fit comfortably are size 6 or size 8.  I understand that pattern sizes and RTW clothing sizes are no longer comparable due to serious vanity sizing in ready-to-wear, but size 16 for my skirt sounds HUGE. 

So I decided to figure out how big the waist of the finished skirt would be if I made a size 16, so I could compare that to the waist of the skirts hanging in my closet.  I measured along the top edge of the skirt waistband pieces, and subtracted out the side seam allowances, and I got a finished waist band of approximately 32 3/4" for a size 16 skirt (not the same as the waist measurement for that size, because the pattern adds wearing ease and the skirt is designed to sit 1" below the natural waistline).  Then I went into my closet and discovered that the most comfortable skirts I own actually do measure around 32" at the waist.  Go figure!  It looks like I'll be making a size 16, after all.  I'm still a little nervous about that -- what if I made a mistake measuring the pattern pieces or subtracting out seam allowances?  Just to be on the safe side, I think I'll cut the waistband pieces out of muslin, stitch them together, and try it on before I cut into the real fabric.  Maybe I should make the WHOLE skirt out of muslin, since I don't really know what I'm doing? 

Ironing Pattern Pieces

Meanwhile, I did manage to cut the pattern pieces apart and iron out the folds and wrinkles (dry iron, medium setting).  But then I stalled out, remembering how I made Lars a cute pair of toddler pajamas (a long, LONG time ago) in size 2T, and then when he outgrew them I couldn't reuse the pattern to make him a larger pair because I had already cut out the smallest size, cutting off all of the larger sizes of the multi-size pattern.  What if I cut on the size 16 line to cut out my muslin, but then after sewing up the muslin I realize that a smaller or larger size would be better?  I'm making the 24" long version of the skirt this time, but what if I decide that I want to make the 29" long skirt someday in the future and I've already cut the extra length off my pattern?  Should I trace the original tissue pattern pieces onto butcher paper, Swedish Tracing Paper, or some other material before cutting them out?  Or is that silly for something so straightforward as this skirt pattern?  I haven't decided yet.

Today I spent some time straightening up and organizing my studio so I have room to work on this project.  I ordered a roll of the Swedish Tracing Paper from Amazon because, even if I don't use it for this pattern, I know I'll want it for when I'm ready to make a lot of pattern alterations to dress and blouse patterns.  I had hoped to make more progress on the skirt today, but I ended up writing about it here instead.  Which is fine.  Writing about it helps me to sort out all of the conflicting advice gleaned from various sources, and helps me to clarify what to do next:

1. I need to read through the pattern instructions and make sure I understand everything.  I may need to look some things up in my sewing books, like how to do a sewn-in self-fabric interfacing, if I decide to go that route.

2. I need to decide how I'm going to finish my seams.  My Fabric Savvy book suggests either French seams or a 3-thread overlock stitch. 

3. I need to trace off the pattern pieces (if I decide to do that) and make up a muslin to check that I like the fit and the style. 

...and THEN I can cut out the pieces from the fashion fabric and the lining!

I'm linking up with Esther's WIPs on Wednesday even though this one isn't quilting related (I hope that's okay).  Meanwhile, we're headed to Carowinds tomorrow to ride the roller coasters with Lars and Anders.  Fingers crossed for light crowds and clear skies!