Bits and pieces

• I spent my sewing time this weekend preparing things to sew rather than actually sewing. This involved: cutting one envelope pattern to size and then using it to cut two garments out of 3m of fabric; tracing one Burda pattern and one Ottobre pattern; and sticking together and cutting out one PDF pattern. I've got my next two garments all ready to sew and will get on with both of them this week. They are both easy little things, so it won't take long -- I wanted something quick and uncomplicated after finishing the coat!. Then I am moving on to the March woven shirt wardrobe replenishment plan, since those take a little longer and with collars and cuffs etc take more careful sewing.

• This weekend's activities also mean I am in an ideal position to weigh in on the "Which is worse: flailing about with flimsy tissue paper; tracing patterns from drunken spirograph pattern sheets; or endlessly sticking together PDFs?" debate. Personally, I definitely dislike PDFs the most because ugh, the lines never perfectly match when you stick together, and it's all so much printing/sticking/taping/cutting/flailing. Next worst is tissue patterns in my opinion. So convenient to just cut them, and yet so flimsy and liable to rip if you even look at them funny, and so impossible to ever fold back into the envelopes! It's not that enjoy tracing, exactly, but since I have developed an efficient tracing method it just feels easiest. Where do you stand?

 

 

Simplicity 8014

•  I have had my eye on Simplicity 8014 since I saw SewCraftyChemist's gorgeous version. Between envelopes, Burda, Ottobre and other sources I already own approximately half a million shirtdress (and other dress) patterns. Yet you'll notice that my tally of successful dresses in the years I've been sewing still stands at the unimpressive count of ONE and it was a very basic knit dress, plus I made one very unsatisfactory woven dress that I wore maybe three times total. So, my half a million dress patterns thus far have mainly just languished unused and I probably didn't have grounds to buy yet another. Nevertheless, when Simplicity 8014 came up as "Pattern of the Week" online I had to have it. I really love view B with the full skirt (which is not gathered as so many shirtdress patterns are) and if it this pattern works for me I will definitely make that at a future date. However, more immediately I am determined to make two very casual woven dresses for this summer, and one of them is going to be a modified view D (because no, 90cm long dress, I don't think so) in black linen.

• The other shirtdress pattern I have that I love is this 1970s Vogue with pleats that release into the skirt. The skirt itself is wow, so very very short, but that's extremely easy to amend and it's such a cute pattern. It's also complete and still in factory folds and I paid so much more than I ought to have done for it. /o\ One of these days I'll make it, right? /o\ I won't post all my other shirt-dress patterns because I'd be here all day doing so. /o\

• Do you have fabrics you just don't know what to do with? I have a pretty good idea what I want to do with almost all my stash, although sometimes only at the level of "make a blouse" rather than any specific pattern. However, I also have fabrics that I like, but everything I think of for them just won't quite work: either I don't have enough fabric, or I have way too much and I'd have a very awkward remnant left at the end, or the weight or drape of the fabric is just not quite right. It's very aggravating. My current dilemma is 2.5m of gorgeous but awkward Irish linen in blue and white stripes. I bought it when I was living in Dublin, and it is gorgeous stuff, it really is... and yet. I made a shirt from the other piece of fabric I bought at the same time and the result was most unsatisfactory when I started to wear it -- the fabric just doesn't have the right drape for a casual boxy summer shirt at all, it hangs much too stiffly. Making something more tailored where the stiffness would matter less is difficult because of the stripes. So I don't know at all what to do with it, and yet I love it and it was expensive (by my standards) so I can't possibly get rid of it.