Sewing Adjacent

I am getting closer to actual sewing. After I finished up the spiced red cabbage yesterday—12 pints—I went to the cutting table to work on the On Repeat woven top pattern. I began by tracing out the front exactly from the pattern:

Sorry, I know that is hard to see because of that late afternoon sun. And I trace in pencil, not marker. That horizontal line is the lengthen/shorten line. The pattern comes in a tall version, but I still had to lengthen it by another inch.

I always find it helpful to lay out patterns side by side to compare them.

From left to right: The Scout Tee; the thing I (erroneously) have been calling my self-drafted pattern for lack of a better description, which is a mashup of a Burda pattern and the Love Notions Cadence top; and the On Repeat Tee. The Scout Tee and the mashup pattern both fit me, but they fit in different ways. The Scout Tee fits closely in the upper bodice—once I get that top on my body, it does not move around AT ALL. You would think that would restrict movement, but I like the fact that I don’t have to worry about it shifting. The darts on both tops are lower than the dart on the On Repeat Tee; on the Scout Tee, they are horizontal and on the mashup tee, they are angled upward. It’s hard to see because those patterns are face down to match the orientation of the On Repeat pattern piece.

After I traced the original On Repeat pattern, I lengthened it by slashing at the lengthen line, spreading it by an inch, then taping an extra piece of paper underneath the opening. The dart was equally easy to adjust. I drew a box around it.

The plus sign indicates the bust apex. The dot indicates the level where I want the dart point to be. I cut the box around the dart, moved it down until the point was where it needed to be, then taped it into place with extra paper covering the hole above.

I really think I prefer the shaping provided when the darts angle upward—as in my mashup tee— rather than horizontally, but I am not going to quibble about it.

Once I had made the needed adjustments, I retraced the pattern:

I can tell, looking at that side seam and comparing it to the other two patterns, that this top is going to fit more loosely below the bust. I won’t know if I like that or not until I sew it up. (I want to avoid anything that screams “maternity top.”) And I can’t sew it up until I trace and alter the back pattern piece and make sure it matches my altered front pattern piece. I am mostly interested in how the armhole fits, as the armscye seems to be in between the tighter shaping of the Scout Tee and the looser shaping of the mashup tee. Will it be a Goldilocks armscye?

[I have some thoughts about that mashup tee armscye, but they will have to wait for another blog post.]

This is why fitting is one of those areas where you can’t just read a bunch of books, understand the theory, and think you know anything. You have to trace and alter and compare and make muslins and see how garments fit on actual human beings. I tell students in my classes that I can teach them basic music theory and how to read music, but I cannot teach them how to play the piano because they have to do that work themselves. Fitting is the same way.

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There will be no sewing for a few days 😩 because Elaine and I are going to Spokane this afternoon. We are helping out at the Mennonite Country Auction tomorrow in Ritzville. Her sister and BIL are coming over from Seattle to meet us there, and Elaine will go back with them for a visit. I’ll spend tomorrow night in Spokane and drive home on Sunday. It is hard for both of us to be gone at the same time because she is my backup pianist at church, but we like to travel together. They will manage without us.