Knot Top Rescue — Janet Szabo

I had enough Walmart remnant fabric left over to re-cut the tops and make the front bodice piece again, and this time, I was careful about where the print landed:

The knot portion of this top is perfect. I like that it is a V-neck but it’s not so low that it exposes my bra. I am still not 100% happy with the length—the top feels too short—so I am going to play around with that some more. Interestingly, it’s the same length as the original top, which has short sleeves, and I wear that one frequently. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that this is a winter top with long sleeves.

I also ran up another Burda 6315:

I didn’t have enough of this fabric for a Toaster Sweater or a Nathalie, so I made the shorter version of Burda 6315. This fabric is a French terry from Knitfabric.com. I adore the print.

I am getting a better sense of what lengths work with my proportions, although “cropped” is not ever going to be one of those lengths.

It’s amazing how a slight change or two can alter the look of a top. The New Look 6555 keyhole top is a great example. That’s this one:

The first one I made was view B, with the handkerchief hem, because on me, longer is always better, right?

Nope. That version never looked good on me. The proportions were off. We were making that pattern in a class one day and one of my students tried on that version, too, and she had the same problem. (She’s about my height.) I walked over to her and folded up the bottom so that it looked like view C and voila!—much better. Now, when I make this pattern, I make view C and I am much happier with it.

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I ran across an interesting comment on a sewing-related YouTube video the other day. The commenter complained that content creators who sew hundreds of garments a year for their YouTube channels are no better than people who indulge in “fast fashion” and buy tons of cheap clothing just because it’s cheap.

Let us first acknowledge the fact that there are a lot of unhappy people in the world who take to social media to vent their spleens. It took me forever to get my Twitter feed curated so that I see posts from clothing historians and fiber artists instead of wackos looking for opportunities to argue about politics. The world is also full of a lot of people who aren’t doing anything productive with their time but who take joy in criticizing people who are.

I find it fascinating that people search out opportunities to consume sewing content while at the same time complaining that content creators are creating too much content.

[I know I said I thought that the Vlogmas videos were oversaturating the YouTube sewing channels, but I was more curious about how daily posting affected their analytics than anything else. It’s important to be consistent, but I find that when I post too much on the blog, traffic decreases.]

Once again, it’s time to point out that if you don’t like a channel/blog/podcast, don’t watch/read/listen to it. That goes for this blog, too. I’m not forcing anyone to come here and read what I write.

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We are still under a winter storm warning here as of 5 am. The husband has resigned himself to spending the day moving snow. The worst of it is supposed to come this afternoon. We shall see what materializes. I am planning to spend the day organizing tax paperwork. I don’t have to do as much data compilation as I used to now that our accountant can get into our QuickBooks account, but I still need to organize the paperwork for storage. I used to try to do this in real time—I carefully filed each invoice and receipt into labeled file folders—but a few years ago I just started chucking all the paperwork into a box. That means that I have to spend much of one day in January sorting and filing, but I am willing to do that in order to avoid daily filing tasks.

If I have time this afternoon, I’ll see what trouble I can get into in my sewing room.