the UGLIEST fabric you've ever seen

I proclaim that blog title as a fact, not a question. I apologise for what I'm about to do to your retinas, but Lizzie asked me in the comments to the last post to share how I make muslins (aka a toile.)

First step is to find a fabric from my stash that I won't ever wear in public but is similar in fabric content, weight and drape to the fabric I plan to use for the final garment. And this fabric certainly fits the bill:

In my defence though, I often buy fabric in bulk lots either from the op shop or garage sales and that's how I end up with gems like these in the stash. But since I'm a hoarder (albeit an organised one and not out of control yet), I never throw any out, no matter what level of ugliness it is. But clearly even ugly fabric comes in handy sometimes!

Now I'm not a professional dress maker, and despite the amount of muslins I've been making recently I don't even make them all that often really. So this ain't a professional tutorial, I'm just sharing with you what I do.

After picking the right fabric, I tend to make the first muslin straight off the pattern with just a few alterations to the pattern that I always make such as a sway back alteration and a narrow shoulder adjustment. I don't bother with interfacing or facings although I do fold under the finished edge 1.5cm so that the finished neckline isn't lower than thought at the end (yeah I learnt that one the hard way). I put both sleeves in too, because getting a good fit around the arms and shoulders is important to me. And now that I've discovered that I have one shoulder lower than the other I now realise why the fit on both shoulders always turned out differently!

And then while I'm wearing the garment, standing in front of the mirror, I basically pinch and tuck and fold and pin the garment to my desired fit, and draw on the garment where I need to take it out (usually around the hip). Literally, like this:

And then I unpick all the seams, transfer the changes to the pattern or make a new pattern piece if it's too different. I've read some pattern making books that recommend using the muslin pieces as the actual pattern which makes sense if you're making something once, but since I want to get rid of the ugly fabric eventually but keep the modified pattern for future usage, I just make the changes to the pattern paper and stick a post it note in the envelope of the changes I made.

If I'm lucky there's not too many changes after the first muslin and I'll then take my chances and go on to make the final version. This dress however needed lots of reworking, to the side panel alone I've reduced the side seam quite a lot, pinched a little excess out of curve of the princess seam, as well as reducing the width of the front panel and the back panel too!

So I'm now onto my second muslin for this one, but it's looking promising. I'm so looking forward to finishing the muslin for this one and binning that ugly fabric - it's depressing sewing with it!

Sorry for the short and rather lame post, as I said I'm not an expert on this so I don't have too much to say about the topic. I just do what works for me, even if it rather unorthodox (or slipshod). Plus I'm convalescing at this point in time, I have another bout of tonsillitis. First one for this year, but after the five bouts last year I wasn't too keen to see it come back so early! My doctor says one more bout and she'll recommend I have them removed which sounds really painful but could also mean a week of ice cream yay!