Even Genius Takes a Holiday Every Once In A While

You know how sometimes you think "Damn!  I look good!"?  And then some evil person shows you a picture of yourself?  And you realize that you are hopelessly delusional?  I just did that to myself.

I was hoping this second draft of my Perfect T-Shirt Pattern would come out, well, perfectly.  And when I put it on, it certainly felt perfect.  Silky-soft cotton jersey? Check.  My bestest color, hot pink? Check. Low-but-not-too-low neckline? Check.  Perfect fit? Che-- uh.  Well...

Not so perfect.  This shirt is the perfect example of how choice of fabric really does make a drastic difference in overall fit.  I was hoping that this fabric wouldn't be as clingy and unflattering as I suspected it would be.  My hopes were, alas, dashed to the ground like so many shattering crystal vases flung from the hands of distraught and frustrated housewives.

Sorry.  I've been ready trashy romance novels this week.

Anyway, here is the second version of my Perfect T-Shirt Pattern.  I decided to rotate the dart up into the neckline and then convert the dart to smocked gathers. (I have a BWOF top- that I have literally worn to pieces- that has this same treatment, so I foresee making this version in about twenty different fabrics.)

For those of you playing along at home who aren't so up on your drafting techniques, here's how you do the dart-to-smocking conversion (I totally made this up myself, so if it doesn't work for you I take absolutely no responsibility for it):

1) rotate the dart up to the neckline (see various sewing books on how to rotate a dart)

2) measure the total width of the dart at the widest point (distance x)

3) multiply distance x times the amount needed to make up the difference in width when gathered (I didn't do a test strip on this, I just guessed that the gathering would need to be about two times the width of the dart... this ended up being slightly too little gathering, so I'm going to try 2.5 times on the next one).  This is distance y.

4) measure distance y from the center front and draw a vertical line parallel to the center front

5) draw a horizontal line (perpendicular to the center front) down from the neckline equal to about 2/3 to 3/4 of the length of the dart

6) draw in your stitch lines for the smocking/gathering (I chose to do five lines of smocking)

 

Here's the end result (warning! giant boob picture ahead):

Everything else in the pattern is the same as my first version. 

And here it is, in all it's unflattering, clingy glory.   Absolutely enhanced by my half-wet hair, of course.  And the fact that I should have pulled the top down at least an inch in the front  before I took the pictures.

 

Ack.

Why the hell my husband let me walk out of the house like this, I have no idea.  The only explanation is that my husband's version of a "good look" for me is exclusively one that he can see down the front of.  And hence he probably thought this top was... perfect.

Genii R Us

I finally have had a chance to get to some sewing this week.  I really just can not tell you how much I hate May.  But now it’s June and we’re all ready for summer to start--  oh wait.  It’s been over 100 degrees for the past week.  I guess summer started a while ago.

In any case, I finally got around to looking at my custom-drafted t-shirt pattern ala Cal Patch’s Weird Custom Drafting Book, a.k.a. Design-It-Yourself Clothes.  Which I wrote about in this post.  To recap, after some serious fitting adjustments I basically ended up with a sloper with side bust darts.  And that’s where I left it.

This week I picked up that pattern and decided that I would try adding some wearing ease (not present in the final pattern), some adjustments for my hunchback (always present on my body) and see what happened (usually a nerve-wracking experience).

What happened is I created the perfect t-shirt.  No.  Really.  It’s perfect.  I am a flippin’ genius and you must bow down and worship the ground I, uh, sew on.

Don’t believe me?  Fine.  Be like that.

Here’s the final (blurry) result, in which I added a more scooped neckline and left the bust dart in place.

I  used a light-weight poly knit of some mysterious type which I bought from Emma One Sock about four years ago.  It is awesome.  Here’s a more color-appropriate swatch:

Here’s the (burry) side view and the (blurry) back view.

OK, so it’s maybe slightly too loose around the middle.  I wasn’t sure how the fabric would hang and I didn’t want it to be clingy.  I could take it in a quarter-inch on both sides probably.

And OK, it was really hard to get a good picture on my own (but significantly easier than trying to get The Husband to understand what qualifies as a “good” picture). 

So you might not, in fact, be able to appreciate my genius sufficiently.  But trust me when I say that this top is the best-fitting and most flattering top I’ve owned in a while.  Plus, because I have the darts in place, I can now move those around into gathers or pleats or whatever and make about a bajillion different styles.

Genius, I tell you.  And now I’ll have time to do some more.  I love June.

The month of June.  Not, you know, June Cleaver.  Although she could wear a mean pearl choker while, you know, baking cookies. Or whatever.

Right.  So when I Googled “June Cleaver” this is what I got:

Plus, this:

 

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I think “yummy” pretty much covers it.  I don’t know who this woman is that’s posting this stuff, but I loooove her.  She is my new hero.  Clearly, she is a genius. 

Takes one to know one.

A Book Review: Design-It-Yourself Clothes

OK, first off, I’m going to tell you right up front that this is a crazy long post with no pretty pictures.  So if you don’t feel compelled to read long, drawn out commentary about books you might not even own, skip ahead to something else now.  Trust me, it won’t hurt my feelings (because I know you all think I’m so sensitive and all).

A few weeks ago I jumped on the bandwagon and bought “Design-It-Yourself Clothes” by Cal Patch (because on top of being emotionally sensitive, I’m also a follower).  Frankly, I have some trepidation about books aimed at beginners that purport to teach them how to “design” anything, be it clothes or gardens or houses.  Generally speaking I find these types of books to be a bad combination of assuming too much ability in the reader on one hand and on the other being unable, in such a limited format, to teach complex design skills.  I just don’t care for them much.  But then, I have had extensive years of training as a designer, so I’m probably a Design Snob.  Just in the interest of full disclosure.  (So let’s see, that’s: Emotionally Sensitive, A Follower and A Design Snob.  Wow.  Lotta labels.)

However, knowing that I have this prejudice and always endeavoring to overcome my shortcomings, I decided to go ahead and give this book a try (especially after seeing Angie A.’s great first-run results with her pants muslin).  I would really really like to have a t-shirt pattern to use as a TNT and I’ve been meaning to rework my old one for months now.  Maybe drafting my own from scratch would be the solution.

Things did not get off to a good start.  In the introductory instructional section, the author walks you through the body measurements you’ll need to take to complete the patterns. Measurement #1 (emphasis is mine):

“BUST: To measure your bust, wrap the tape measure around your chest at it's fullest point.  Be sure that the loop you’re making around yourself is roughly parallel to the floor, and that it’s not dipping up or down as it wraps around you.  This number should be the same as your bra size.”

Um.  No.  No it should not.  Unless you are a man.  Even an A cup bra wearer will not have their full bust measurement add up to their bra size, unless they are wearing someone else’s bra.  Now your high bust measurement, that should be your bra band size.  Try it sometime.  For instance (and sorry but here we go a little number-crunching crazy):

My under-bust measurement is 32”.  You add 4” to this number to get my bra size, which is 36.  My high bust measurement is, not-so-coincidentally, 36”.  My full bust measurement is 41”.  There is a 5” difference between my high bust measurement (or my band size) and my full bust measurement (41” – 36” = 5”), therefore based on these calculations I should wear a 36 DD bra.  Which I do.  I do not wear a 42 bra.

Now this quote of the author’s could totally be a typo.  But I think in a book aimed at beginners, this is a sort of a big problem and will cause no end of confusion. 

From there, things got more difficult.  At no point does the author suggest taking an high bust measurement and then adjusting in some way for the full bust size.  I think that if you use your full bust measurement to draft your pattern, you will end up with batwings under the arms, because you haven’t allowed for boobs.  This is just my (somewhat educated) theory.  Saying that, I only drafted this on paper and didn’t try it in a muslin, so maybe I’m wrong about that.  Regardless, I think the confusion about the bra size/bust measurement thing alone would be hard for a beginner.

Or maybe not.  The intention of this book is pretty clearly focused mostly on the ability to produce your own designs and only nominally to have them fit you based on your measurements.  Which a beginner can probably achieve with the given information.  This is in the opening paragraph:

“You know exactly what you want and you’ve got the sewing skills to pull it off, if only there weren’t that one, teensy-weensy recurring problem: the pattern.  Even the best seamstress needs one, but a pattern for the vision in your head just plain does not exist. Yet.”

With this system, you can make your own patterns but they won’t fit extraordinarily well without some standard alterations, if you don’t fit into a fairly slim mold.  A really slim mold.   But they will be your designs and maybe that’s all that’s important.

I did make the pattern exactly as described in the book.  Then I made the pattern again using my high bust measurements instead of my full bust measurements.  Here’s a comparison, the original pattern on the bottom and the high bust pattern on top.  The bottom one is actually .25” too narrow at the bustline because I mis-measured, but still you get the idea):

Next I did a standard Full Bust Adjustment on the pattern that used my upper bust measurement.  I ended up with a pretty good approximation of my existing sloper, minus the alteration for my sloping shoulders (the author suggests an average figure for factoring the shoulder slope, which was not nearly steep enough for me since I have very sloping shoulders— I think I can add a shoulder slope body measurement to my list and adjust for it in the flat pattern.  I’m going to investigate that later).  

Here’s the comparison of the high bust pattern (on top) and the FBA pattern (on bottom):

This new pattern, along with the back and sleeve draft, made a skin-tight t-shirt that I would call a sloper since I don’t ever wear clothes with zero or negative ease.    It did fit relatively well, with just a few fitting issues around the armscye relating to the sloping shoulder adjustment that I haven’t made yet.

So after all that, I may be able to add some ease to this and just perhaps I’ll have my perfect t-shirt after all.   But I don’t think I could have done it without knowing about the FBA beforehand.  Plus, because she has you draft the front and back identically and I did that humongous FBA, my side seams were off-center by about 2” (which isn’t surprising since my FBA was 2.5”).  So if I want my side seams to be in the right place, I’ll have to readjust both the back and the front patterns.  Frankly, I’m not sure how that will go.

Sheesh.  I think I could have just used my existing sloper, but I can’t get that vision of the Perfect T-Shirt holy grail out of my head so I think I’ll keep working on it. 

I will say that I like the attitude of this book and the chatty style of the writing.  And I think on the whole for pants and skirts the drafting will work pretty well for most people.  But I’m not totally convinced on the shirt thing unless you are a very slim, very small-busted person.  There’s a reason all the models in the book look like they wear A cup bras.

Saying that, this will be a great way to draft things for the kids, since they obviously don’t wear bras at all yet.  So that will be interesting.  Plus, I finally broke down and bought the pattern drafting book that Judy loves so dearly, so I guess I really will be drafting my own kids’ patterns in the near future.

 

And now I say, “Wow.  If you read all that, you are a much more patient person than I am.  You get another gold star!”  And yes, at some point I will actually sew something and write about it.  And my next two posts will consists of nothing but pictures.  Honest.  Pretty pretty pictures with no words at all.  Well.  Maybe a few words.