It’s Not A SWAP. It’s a SWHAP.*

So I finally got around to making one of the items on my Fall SWAP.  This week.  The last week of February.  In which it's been, on average, 76 degrees during the day.  (Tomorrow is supposed to be 86.)  So that's been super-useful, wardrobe-wise.

Here's my inspiration garment:

Here's what I made:

Um.  It looks better in person.  Honest. 

It's a little hard to see because of the bad photo.  And the black fabric.  Which, by the way, I salvaged from a CP Shades tent-dress that I bought circa 1993.  Yes.  I am that thrifty.  And when I say “tent” dress, I mean, “Three people and a small dog could sleep in it.  Comfortably.”  There was some sense in saving the dress.  Once upon a time it was a really nice rayon brocade fabric and as mentioned above there was a lot of it.  In truth, it’s a little too worn and pilly to really be very nice now.  However it made the perfect wearable muslin.  Since it made... a muslin.  And I'm wearing it.  HA! 

(insert smug in-your-face happy dance here)

So to make the above garment I decided, against my deepest inclinations and sense of morality, to purchase a pattern for a pillowcase dress.  Yes.  That's right.  I purchased a pattern for a pillowcase dress.  With money.  Real money.  American.  Dollars.  Moooooooneeeeee.

I feel... dirty.

But, I just couldn't be bothered to draft my own pattern from scratch.  And if truth be told, I only paid $1.99 for it.   Which is about the limit of what it’s worth, I might add.

As it turned out this pattern was a good basis for my further design modifications, which mostly was to change out the simplified (and rather unflattering) gathering on the front yoke to nice, deep, stitched pleats and to make facings for the casings instead of foldovers.  I think both features add character to the inspiration garment.

Clear as mud?   Here’s the actual muslin muslin which shows the pleats a little better.

You can see where I added 1.5” for my usual FBA at the center front and then just spaced the pleats evenly to make up the distance of the original gathered pattern.

All around, I like this top.  Of course, I can only wear it in the winter because frankly, ain't no way in hell I'm wearing a sleeveless top without something else underneath it.  Seriously.  People do not need to be subjected to my upper arms.  I'm pretty sure there's something in the Geneva Convention specifically about that.

However, as it's supposed to only be 70 as the high next week, I think I'll make another version using the color-blocking idea from this inspiration set… er… that I made... er... last summer.

Some day I’ll actually sew a garment the season before it’s supposed to be worn.  Some magical day.

 

*Sewing With Half A Plan.

Seriously. I Said Rotate. So Let’s See Some, People.

So there was another dart rotation pin floating around the interwebs a while back, which Lin3arossa pointed us to in the comments last week.  I'd been eyeing that one with trepidation as well, because it's pretty interesting but also highly pixilated.  I was also a little more concerned about the copyright issue on this one, as it's clearly from a book, it's not just some sort of reiteration of common knowledge but an actual illustration, and so far I haven't found anyone who's credited it.

I mean, I don't want to steal something from someone.  Especially without credit.

On the other hand, I really hate pixilated images.

So here you go: 

I actually redrew this one by hand… with a pen.  You know, pens?  Those pointy stick things that people used to write with?

No really.  People used to write things by hand. 

I know.  Shocking.

This is the same as the last one, just click on the image above to download or print.

 

PS:  If anyone knows where the original image is from, please let me know and I’ll add a credit.

PPS:   If you clicked to download or print the file from last week sometime before yesterday afternoon, you probably have a piece of text on it that says something like "Ruby's Super-hot Salsa Dancing".  Or something like that.  Just FYI.  You might want to re-click and re-download that particular file, which no longer sports that particular mystifying piece of text.

Don't ask.

Lift… Lift… Lift… Aaaaaand… Rotate.

M’kay, so several people have pinned a nice little copy of a dart rotation chart on Pinterest in the past couple of weeks.  Which is, y’know, what I just said: nice.  However, it’s a small image and pixilated and hard to read and just plain annoying.  In that respect.

So I made a new version.

I’d say I was worried about infringing on someone’s copyright or something but I mean… c’mon.  It’s a dart rotation chart.  I have one in at least four different sewing books.  It’s not exactly the Colonel’s Secret Recipe or the formula for making yellowcake uranium.  Which actually you can get at Wikipedia. 

My blog suddenly just jumped up on someone’s “This Might Be Dangerous, Watch This More Closely” list.  Right?

You know how cloak-and-dagger those international food companies are.

My point being, this is all well and good except that I can’t ever seem to find a rotation chart when I’m looking for one.  This actually happened to me just last week.  Again.  It was irritating.

So I made a new version.

If you click on the image, you can download a high-res PDF.  And then print it out.  And then keep it in a binder labeled “Dart Rotation” so you can find right away instead of digging out six different books and sobbing in frustration for an hour because not one of the books has that chart in the “dart” section or listed in their index but you know they are in those books.

Um.  Or, y’know.  Whatever it is you want to do with it.

I really didn’t have anything else to say about all this.

Um. 

I guess go rotate something. 

Shoo.  Go.