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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

PPM #5 Playing with Facings



This is the first project of the second book. It was hard to choose one, there are so many interesting patterns in this book. But I decided to start with something simple and wearable. There's a series for patterns that show how to alter the neckline by altering the facing. Marianna already showed one of them on a dress. An interesting concept, changing the outside by shaping from within.

Drafting and cutting
Drafting was easy, this is a quick one. The pic above shows all there is to it. I used my own slopers. I took the opportunity to draft a low V back as well, I've been wanting to do this for a while. Cutting was a bit tricky, I discovered my fabric was only 110 cm wide (43"). I had two metres and the book recommends that you cut the bodice on the bias. And I wanted a half circle skirt. With some puzzling it worked out, I even managed to get a facing for the back out of it as well.





Fabric
The book does not always mention what kind of fabric to use. To me it looked like the fabric should have some weight to get a nice fold. I had found this beautiful quilting cotton at the shop the week before, but at 21,95 per metre it was way over my budget. Fortunately there was a one day 50% off sale going on. Lucky me!



Sewing
The sewing process went nice and smooth for most of the day. I took my time even though I had to finish the dress the same day. I staystitched all the bias cut edges of the bodice, necklines and skirt right after cutting. I payed attention to the pattern an finishing the seams. I didn't have to get my seam ripper out until the very end, when I messed up the blind zip. It was funny, because it happenend right when I thought 'hey, I haven't messed up one stitch yet' and also 'I don't understand why people don't use blind zips all the time, they're not hard to put in at all'. HAH. Well now I know not to think these things until after I'm finished. Usually I would have stopped sewing before that point, but I wanted to finish it today.



The Magic
Although I'm happy with the dress, it's obvious that this magic is done by an apprentice. It's just a bit messy, the fold is there but there's some more bulgeing going on on the other side. I don't know where that excess fabric comes from, I thought I'd followed the diagram. So I thought this would be an easy one, and for drafting and sewing it was. It's just that the magic is not accomplished as easily. I should have stopped and taken a step back to really look at what was going on at the neckline, instead of thinking it would sort itself out. Ah well. I learned and tried some new things, like the V back and using a bias cut bodice. And I practiced the Ann approach, which is still working very well. Right now I'm very tired of all this work in one day, so my opinion of this dress is no quite clear and might change. Is there some magic or is it just a messy cowl? I'd love to know what you think!

15 comments:

  1. I think it came out really cool. I noticed that it didn't quite look like the diagram but thought it was an intentional variation and loved it. I was hoping you'd tell us exactly how you did it so I could copy...but maybe you need magic to make it come out this way!

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    1. Haha, funny :) Sorry, I really have no idea! My neckline measurement was different, I had to add a few cm. Maybe because I used my own sloper.

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  2. It looks good! Though, messy cowls are cool anyway so just roll with it ;)

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  3. I really really like this dress!

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  4. WOW!!! Great pattern and cute dress! It´s an easy effect to make in many differents garments, for example a tee would be great!

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  5. An excellent first choice - that neckline is one of my favourites of theirs. It translates into reality quite well, too!! And yay for half price fabric! :)

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  6. I think your dress looks very nice. If your cowl is messier than the one in the book, I think it might just be that the one in the book has been folded and smoothed into position.

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    1. I tried that, but it didn't work. There's just too much fabric somehow.

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    2. I thought the same! Maybe there was a difference between your block/sloper and the book's...
      Looks great regardless :-)

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  7. It's a lovely dress and a great fabric choice. I like how the pattern is affected by the folds. If there are imperfections, I'm sure they won't be noticeable to anyone else!

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  8. The fabric is just lovely and the v-neck back and circle skirt go so well with the magic messy cowl.

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  9. hellooo i'm currently trying to tackle the asymmetrical facing as well and cant figure out if i should leave the 3 darts in or draft them out of the pattern, do you have any idea?

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    1. Hi, I assume you're talking about step 5? You should draft the 3 darts out of the pattern. So you spread and then draft a new line, and you don't sew the darts.

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