Crisis Avoided or Why You Should Always Read Directions.

So coming back from weeks of slaving away in front of both the sewing machine at work and the sewing machine at home( My boss affectionately refers to me as "an old sew-and-sew.") I am finding time to blog. FINALLY. I swear, I'm gonna get better at this.

And with my brand new Singer 9960 Quantum Machine, I am continuing with the Lady Rarity Dress.

LOOK AT HOW AWESOME IT IS!
The ruffler foot even works on it! 

The Equine fashionista herself!

I'm using Truly Victorian Patterns 1872 Vest Basque and 1875 Parisian Trained Skirt. In white and royal purple cotton/silk poplin bought from Fabric.com. 

The train and bustle on the on the skirt and the cuffs and collar on the top are in the purple to

'simulate' Rarity's mane and tail. The front apron on the skirt is white as are the sleeves and main body of the bodice. The faux vest at the front will be a light blue silk. I ordered a yard of a few different ones from puresilks.us, so I still don't know which one yet.

An armscye is the armhole- where the
sleeve connects to the bodice.

Now, where is this would-be crisis I lured you here with? I'm not alone in the sewing world when it comes to issues with armscyes. They are either too big, causing unsightly bunching and gathering; or they are too small, preventing you from moving your arms. With the mock up I made of the vest basque, the armscye was so constricting that it was painful to hole my arms out in front of me. At first I thought it was due to me trying it on without my corset and proper undergarments, but even when I was all decked out, my underarm and shoulder suffered.

I reluctantly decided that I needed to manually enlarge the armscye on the pattern. Then, something in the back of my head told me I needed to re-read the directions and I found this:

"Choose Front, Vest, and Collar pattern piece that correlates to your Adjusted Front."

This could have ended very badly.

All I needed to do was a bit of math, and I figured out that the size I needed was two-parts one-size and one-part a-size-larger. The actual bodice turned out perfect!

The moral of this story: READ THE DIRECTIONS ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES! It may seem like a waste of time, but your beautiful outfit will thank you!

Here is some more pictures of how the dress is going so far!




Doing Things The Hard Way...

      I know the three people who follow this blog have been wondering where I've been. Well, I've been busy....

      A perfect storm of Things-Just-Not-Working have set me back a bit. I am trimming the Lady Rarity dress with purple ruffles at the hems and seams. The ruffles at the hems are to themselves be hemmed on the top and bottom edge and the ruffles at the seams would simply be gathered and sewn in.

      I had planned to use my handy-dandy narrow hem presser foot to do this quickly as I've heard wonderful things about it, but alas, I seem to have ordered the union worker of the bunch.... 

Working it's horror on some poor
unsuspecting scrap fabric...

      And by that I mean: This thing wants to work on ITS OWN terms and if you violate that, it will set out to destroy you and everything you have ever planned to accomplish.


      So, I am forced to hem 1/4" on both long edges by hand...


      All 2+ yards of it...


    Yea, remember when I said I've been busy?

It's at least two yards...

      It took me all weekend and then, when I thought I was finally done with this batch(because I still need to do a whole lot more...) I found that my ruffler foot attachment doesn't want to work on my machine anymore. So, several hours of troubleshooting and broken needles later I decided that I'll give it a try at the machines at school. 

      It worked. Sort of.

      The machine kept sputtering and skipping pleats and I wasn't able to finish at least half of the super long ribbon before class ended.

At the moment, I'll continue to fiddle with it and I'll try it out on one more machine before I quit the ruffler foot and gather the old fashion way; Two long stitches and a whole lot of time.


Have any of your sewing projects been halted, postponed or slowed down by technology conspiring against the seamstress?




Humina, humina- What's this? A Dowager Dame, Lady Monroe Facebook page? I know there's a few people who read this page- I know you're out there! I can see the pageviews! YOU CAN'T HIDE FOREVER!- So why not head on down there and drop us a like and a comment?