Tuesday, February 16, 2010

And we're back to baby sewing!

Lets face it, there was never much chance that I'd get around to getting fabic for my jeans THAT fast was there? I did have these two wee dresses ready to go and needed to get a couple of things made to replace the couple I'd sold, so obviously they went to the top of the list.


This first one is a basic bubble dress with bubble sleeves as well. The fabric makes them look like butterfly wings, and I'm curious to see whether this dress appeals to people or not. Now that I've finished it I wish I'd given it a CF seam and put each section on the straight grain so there were bias seams giving a chevron effect at CF, CB and side seams. That would have balanced much better. The lining holds everything in place so it would have been nice and stable still. Damn it, I hate it when I realize too late what I should have thought of in the first place! Now I think I'll have to revisit this design in a very subtle stripe......

To get a pattern for a bubble dress with bubble sleeves I first thought of combining one of my existing bubble dress patterns with another I'd drafted with sleeves in it (since the armhole and shoulders of the bubble dress had been altered quite a bit from it's block) but to my surprise they would not marry AT ALL! I've been a bit slack about keeping complete records about which block each design came from, and these two patterns must either have come from different blocks or been altered over the course of developing several new patterns to the point where the small changes added up to insurmountable differences. (I often begin with an existing pattern rather than a block, if the design is closer to where I'm going). I figured that since I had to go back to the block and start from scratch anyway I might as well take the opportunity to draft a size 2, since I didn't have that size drafted already. I am really pleased with how the draft turned out, and it'll be an easy matter to alter this pattern to the pinafore style of my other bubble dresses.

And because it was a very quick easy thing to make, and they seem to be popular, I also made one of my original bubble dresses.



Just a comment to Mary Nanna - um, what makes you think I won't be a tightwad? As desperately as I want to make those jeans I'll wait till the right fabric is on sale! (I can just see that scarf top on you too.)



2 comments:

  1. Those dresses are really cute.. if I had a little girl I would definitely buy one!

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