School-inspired sewing

[janestarz]

Short dress diary to illustrate how to go from pattern to a shirt. Mundanewear.




This was the inspiration. Of course, I'm not going to make the full jacket, but I love the lines under the bust. We'd finished drafting this piece and I figured I might as well make myself a shirt. I had just the thing for it too: a lovely jersey.
Note to Laiv: this is what I meant when I said "a sleeve cut in one with the body" - there's no shoulder seam and the sleeve is attached to the front pattern piece.



The initial draft of the pattern to my size. I drafted it with no ease whatsoever. As you can (might) see, the bust point is moved down to the cutting line, which is possible because the top is slashed and extra room is added (3 cm per slash)



Which will create this pattern piece. The 3 centimeters are added between the slashing lines and the extra fabric will be gathered to make it fit the bottom part of the shirt. The waistline (top half of the picture) is more flowing than what I originally drew.



Fabric! It was a coupon, but for € 6,- I can make a pretty shirt.



Front pattern pieces. You can see the top half is longer than the bottom three parts combined. This is where the gathering comes in.
I took care not to place the bust point over one of the white flowers -- recognise these? They're the same ones as the mystery plant in the garden. They're called dipladenia.



Pin, change needles, sew.



The finished shirt. Pretty neat for a six buck shirt. (Yes, it still lacks bias tape in this picture, but it was added later.)

Things to improve:
1) Despite drafting without any ease, the shirt was still 5 cm too large, which I had to take out of the side seams. Teacher Hanny says that is strange, she did not instruct me to draft with negative ease, but I'm considering it when I will be working with jerseys.
2) The bottom half of the shirt works well and emphasises the right bits of me, but the front length of the top half was too much. It created the illusion of having saggy boobs, and it was hideous. Teacher Hanny pinned it for me and I fixed it for the most part, but the thing is that this model will not really work for me because of the gathering at the underbust line. The underbust line should be fitted really well. This model will create a look that will increase cup size visually. I do not need this.
3) Basting the shirt and trying it on is probably easier than taking out the lock stitches twice. Next time I need a pattern that is already fitted to my body size, or I need to baste and adjust the fit.
4) Though brown is my colour, the green is not.

I wore the shirt to coffee with diverteddreamer last Friday, so yes I will wear it, but I will always have to wear something over it to hide the fact it doesn't fit or flatter me.

Making a fitted pattern I can use for drafting is now right at the top of my to-do list.

Comments

[nathreee.livejournal.com]

Tops with gathering just under the breast not only make the breasts look bigger, they also don't flatter the belly. When I wear one, I look like I'm pregnant.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

The shirt isn't that tight. Hanny refused to pin it even tighter there, saying "dat is nergens voor nodig". If it's too tight across the belly it will emphasize it, but if its loose enough it won't show so much.

[lenny (from livejournal.com)]

Gheh. Toen ik de foto van de lockmachine zag, was ik gelijk jaloers omdat ik nooit alles gelijk kan locken, omdat de kans groot is dat het niet meteen goed past. Maar blijkbaar heb jij daar ook last van :-)

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Helaas wel!

[anemoona.livejournal.com]

Mijn juf vertelde dat als wij een patroon maken voor een jersey t-shirt dat we tot 10% van de breedtematen af mogen trekken (lengtematen blijven hetzelfde). Dit zodat het shirt ook zit als een t-shirt, het is nu eenmaal stretch stof.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

Kijk, dat is advies waar ik wat mee kan (een stuk beter dan wat Hanny zei)! Duly noted.