my sewing room has been a crowded mess for a while. there were two pieces of essentially useless furniture taking up space in the small room and i have moved them so that they take up space in another, less used, room. i also pulled out all of my scraps and stash and went through everything in an attempt to not be the person who saves every last piece of fabric because who knows when you might need it.
before:
after:
i forgot to get a snap of the tall shelves in the corner which now hold my fabric stash (revised and organized). the tall shelves and the one sitting on the end of the cutting table are both gems from the ikea children’s furniture collection minus the plastic doors/drawers. they are perfect for my sewing things!
last week i worked on shiny green pretty and i am really pleased/proud of how it turned out. i wore it to the wedding rehearsal dinner last friday and received many compliments. i started with the same pattern as the orange flowers tunic and made some major alterations. the most structural of the changes was that i removed the pleats from the front of the bodice.
to do this i took the original orange flowers bodice front and folded out the pleats until the top line matched the front yoke piece. i wound up with the tiniest amount of ease in the front bodice, but this is a stretch silk charmuese so it wasn’t a big deal.
the second major change i made was to draft a facing piece for the back (the original pattern calls for an invisible zip and in the orange flowers i just hemmed the opening for an over-sized keyhole back). this fabric wouldn’t have looked right with a visible seam around the keyhole so i drafted the facing and lined it with the proper weight interfacing (no shirt tailoring interfacing this time).
the third change i made was to make it sleeveless for summer time. this required a self bias binding all the way around the arm scye instead of just the bottom half. no problem, but this one i hand sewed to hide the stiching, ugh.
last but not least, the most visual element, i added a sash at the natural waist. it’s a two piece long sash inserted at the side seams that wraps around front and ties in back. if i make this pattern again, i will make a separate obi-style sash possibly in a contrasting fabric.
here is the finished product. thanks to dylan for the good picture.
