Monday Night Fiddling

DH has rather faced the facts and recognized that 1)He's got so much on his plate that he either needs to drop some things or get another plate and 2)He is not dedicating any outside time to his BSF class and so is getting very little benefit from it. Consequently he has decided that, in the interest of maintaining sanity, he needs to withdraw from the Monday night BSF class. I'm sorry that it's come to that, but I can see that he is not getting nearly the benefit from the class I did...he just doesn't have enough time; especially as he has church commitments on Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights and every other Thursday night. Freeing his Mondays will give him just a little breathing room.

Now, I could still make it a point to have dinner over and out of the way by 6, as if everyone were leaving to go to Bible Study, and then still use Mondays as my 'Kitchen Table Sewing' nights...the nights when I trace/alter patterns or cut fabric, but, well, we'll see. We're normally done w/dinner in the neighborhood of 7; but the table is normally in use for homework virtually all evening. So last night may have been my last regular pattern alteration/cutting night.

But I did do a fair amount of work; first I played around with my Cadeau T pattern; I marked on the front where I want to put that bow (1/2 way between the side seam and the CF), then measured the tie ends and marked them so that I would, in effect, be stretching the ties about 15% when attaching them to the bottom of the T...to get the blousing effect that shown on the line drawing. Then I traced new neck band/facing pieces, pivoting them so that the shoulders are 1" narrower than the original. Finally I walked the seams on the top/sleeve joins and narrowed the sleeves so that the seam length and the notches match.

The next pattern up is the princess-seamed T, Vogue 8323. There are a few reviews for this pattern up; they all say that the sleeve cap is low and has too much ease. So, instead of doing my normal 8-in-the-shoulders-morph-to-bigger everywhere else hassle, I traced a size 14 for both view A (surplice) and View C (scoop), but only rough cut it around the shoulder and armsceye, leaving extra tissue. Then I marked the side front/side back seamlines on the scoop neck view front and back, and the side front and back pieces (the side pieces are the same for all views...how convenient!). Then I overlaid the side front/front and side back/back pieces at the seamlines (a little tricky, owing to the curve, but doable), and pulled out my TNT Loes Hinse Cowl Top pattern. Matching Centers and shoulders, I traced the shoulder/armsceye/underarm from the Cowl Top onto the Vogue tracing, blending where the lines were the same at the neckline and upper sideseam. The result was that the armsceye was moved up and in about 1", and, conveniently, all the changes were on the side front/side back. Then I just traced the sleeves from the Cowl top...I'll use those instead of the Vogue sleeves. When I'm using a less complicated pattern (i.e., one that doesn't have curvy seams to deal with ), I'll take a couple of pictures of the process. Anyway, that should make that top fit...unless I need to lower the bust point. But on a stretchy top, that's kind of hard to determine. So the first top will be from a cheap knit, just to check that.

I got that far when DH and the kids got home last night, but DD had some homework yet to finish, which she'd spread out over the family room floor. So I decided to just keep going. Earlier this fall, I'd picked up a mystery poly/lycra knit print from Hancock's for $2.95/yd. I'd originally intended it to be a wrap dress, but last night I pulled out the wrap dress pattern and looked it over good and realized that I'm a good 10 pounds over what I'd want to be to wrap myself in jersey knit. So, I put that pattern back. There will be fabric available when I'm down to size (I believe, I believe....) Instead, I laid the knit out and cut out the Cadeau and the Scoop neck view of the Vogue pattern, w/the cap sleeves from the Cowl Top. There was a bit of fabric left, and I'd traced a DD-sized copy of Jalie 2005 about 6 months ago, so I went ahead and cut a t out for her from the remnant...I added 2" in length to the top; it looked a little short (it has been 6 months).

DD finished her homework just as I had one tabletop's worth of patterns laid out and ready to cut, but I went ahead and started cutting and finished up around midnight. I may have just given myself an excuse to put off sewing the thank-you gifts a little longer, but I did want to get these things tested out. Fabrics that are wanting these patterns are in backlog...