testing, testing, 1 2 3

Well my wedding ring made it's way out of Anna safely, with no harm to either the swallower or the ring itself! I'll spare you the gruesome details, but I still can't bring myself to wear it yet and it's still sitting in a bowl of disinfectant. Anna is quite proud of her little tale, if we ask her 'what happened to mummy's ring?', this is what she does:

And then she will point to her rear end and say quite loudly "it came out my bum"! That's children for you, keeping it real......

Thanks all for your empathy and sympathy regarding our little experiment in sleep deprivation torture. It doesn't gladden me to hear that other people have suffered from it, but it is nice to know that others have experienced it and are still surviving and indeed had more children. Mary Nanna - you've hit the nail on the head for me, I feel that other people just have no clue how hard some children can be to parent when their own children are reasonably well behaved, and it gets very annoying when they try to downplay what I'm experiencing.

And thanks everyone for your opinions on those bell sleeves - I knew you would all have an opinion or two! However, I'm still torn, I think they look good but it does seem like a lot going on what with the peplum and pleats of the skirt, plus I can see how unpractical they could be. I guess I'm going to have to make a test garment before I decide.

And speaking of test garments, I forced myself to finish the hem on the dress I made recently as a test for a new pattern only because of my resolve to create no new UFOs. I wore it today too, and in addition to the fit of the dress being nothing special, it was also not that comfortable as it was too restricted around the shoulders. Sigh, such a waste of two fitting muslins and one test garment! But at least my expensive and beautiful fabric I planned to use is still sitting safe and sound in my stash until I find the one.

The pattern I used is Vogue 1914 which is a 1997 Calvin Klein pattern, and is so OOP that a google search didn't even find someone selling it second hand, nor any mention of it all anywhere else.


I chose to make View B, which is the sleeveless version pictured in the centre. Doesn't look like anything special does it? But it was the back view that piqued my interest:

I thought that the curved inset band in the lower back of the dress would greatly help with my issues of excess fabric in that area. But it didn't, sadly. Fitting muslin 1 was cut straight off the pattern: too tight around the hips, too big in the bust, and loads of ease in the front and back (typical result).

Fitting muslin 2: I made a swayback adjustment to both the bodice back and back inset piece, added a few centimetres width to the skirt, took out a few centimetres across the bust, and widened the darts in the front. Still not a great fit.

Having gotten sick of sewing and then taking apart fitting muslins I gave up at this point and made a test garment with further modifications: I put a vertical dart in the back bodice piece, also shortened the bodice by 2cm, and lowered those front darts. Here's my finished test garment:

The front doesn't look too bad in this photo, but trust me there is a lot of puffiness in the front there below my bust near my waist. As you can see from the side shots, I can pinch out a fair amount of excess fabric in both the front and back above my hipline:

Maybe my expectations are too high, I want a close fitting dress that skims over my curves without clinging but when you have very large hips, a small waist and an even smaller bust size it just doesn't work, especially in a woven fabric. I'm not kidding, according to the Vogue measurements my bust is a size 6, my waist is between a size 10 and 12, and my hip is a size 16.

Possibly also the fabric I used didn't help either - it was one of those fabrics that I couldn't decide whether it was fugly or amusing. It's a vintage cotton that came in a bulk lot I bought off ebay quite a few years ago, and the pattern is little brown strawberries and orange flowers:

It's no great loss to have made a dress from this fabric that I will probably only wear around the house!

But this exercise wasn't a complete loss, I did learn some more about my fitting issues that I hadn't realised I had, despite having done a pattern making course where we did detailed measurements:

1. I think I'm short waisted, because by shortening the bodice by 2cm it made the skirt fall over my hips and thighs much better.

2. I'm not so sure I need to do sway back adjustments, since that didn't really help anyway and thanks to pattern~scissors~cloth I realise there are other causes of excess fabric in the back.

3. My shoulders are quite uneven, with my right side being about 1.5cm lower than the left. Sewing a larger seam on my right shoulder piece fixed up a diagonal wrinkle I had across the front, so realising this was quite the revelation. But now that I look at the rear view photos of myself, it should have been clear all along:

4. Those French darts on the front of the dress (a combined waist and bust dart emerging from the side seams - thanks again to pattern~scissors~cloth for the definition) don't suit my figure. Seperate bust dart and vertical contour front darts works much better for me, as do princess seams.

Anyway I've put this all behind me now, I have so many other patterns that I think it's unnecessary to further work on this one when I may have the perfect pattern in my stash just waiting for me to try it. Plus I've already started work on my next dress, which in a major departure from my usual it's in a bright fabric. Vivid in fact! Not at all grey. As a teaser here's the thread I'm using: