progress, finally

With Betty-the-Janome happily back in her place on my coffee table, I'm finally making progress on the pink and grey plaid shirt. I catch: I can't seem to care about it. I know I need more shirts, and that it will be very cute, etc, but all I can think about are pretty dresses with matching half jackets, fourties trousers, sweet little tops in brightly coloured silks. Spring is popping up all over, and it's whispering to me to make gingham dresses, not flannel shirts. Unfortunately, all of the projects I'm excited about have either the pattern or the fabric (or both) still in the post, so I'll just have to bide my time.

shapeless box of a shirt

So far, I have the darts, side, and shoulder seams sewn and edged in bias tape, with the sleeves about to be put in. I'm a little nervous about those; not only have I not set in sleeves since grade nine home ec, but after unthinkingly taking in the side seam on the blouse body, my sleeve hole is two inches smaller than it started out being. Pinning that much out of the arm seam made for awkwardly snug sleeves, so I'm going to try either gathers or tucks in the sleeve cap to take up the extra slack. With some luck it will look like an interesting design feature instead of a slapdash fix, ha ha. My first attempt at pattern matching didn't work very well, I will have to read up on it in my lovely new sewing books before trying it again.

side seam pattern matching = fail

After that I guess I'm done for the night, as I realised when I went to cut it out that I'm right out of interfacing for the collar and button strips. Oh dear, that means it's off to the fabric store for me tomorrow morning, with all their pretty spring fabrics... and a fifty percent off everything sale... Somehow I think I'll be coming home with more than interfacing ;).

As far as me-made-march goes, I've been good about remembering to do it, but not so much about the photographing. Days 6, 7, and 11 somehow got missed, but here's the rest of the week:

day 8/12

Me made pink peasant skirt, with black/white striped shirt on day 8, black/pink striped shirt on day 12.

day 9

Me made pink ruffle shirt, with a lovely pink skirt from the now closed In The Starlight website.

day 10

Me made red peasant top with me made grey corduroy jumper skirt.

And next week I'll try to remember pictures every day, and hopefully some new wardrobe additions to show off :).