Skirt lining sewn

I decided to sew the skirt lining first.  This gave me the opportunity to make fitting adjustments before sewing the skirt fabric. I did have to take deeper seams from waist to hip.

I hope to be able to sew a little this evening.  I am having some issues with my left wrist and not sure why or the cause.  As a result I have wrapped it a wrist band to give it some stability.  I could understand better if my right wrist hurt, since I am right handed.  I have put off contacting my physician but think today I will make that call.

More later.

A burst of energy

Usually by Monday evening I am pretty much dragging. I decided to go to CURVES after work since I did not go on Saturday. DH is working late so when I finished my 30 minutes of exercise, went home and showered. I had this burst of energy after showering so decided to cut out the lining for the KS dress. I was amazed at how quick the process went. No interruptions, a quiet house and I was focused. Plus the lining was on the sewing table waiting to be touched and cut.

So lining is now cut out and now I getting ready to throw some dinner together. Energy is still good but waning.

PS--I hope everyone who celebrates had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday.

Next projects

The skirt is finished and I still need to take photos of the completed skirt. I cut out the Vogue jacket pattern today. I decided to pin fit the pattern again as I found a note I made when I started this pattern before. The note was about issues with the bottom of the jacket not hanging correctly.

The real issue was that I had not made an adequate FBA the first time around. So I added another inch using FFRP method for princess seams. Pin fitted again and pleased with the pattern fit. I just did have enough fabric left to make it. I did run out of lining fabric. I only needed to cut out the side front lining piece so used the polyester charmuese fabric that I am also using to make a blouse.

I plan to make this McCall's blouse. I plan to make View D. The fabric is from Gorgeous Fabrics. Here is a photo of the fabric. I also used some of this as lining for the jacket. Learning from others who use silk or poly charmuese, you really need to cut the pieces single layered as this is truly slippery fabric. Having it folded, the fabric was fighting against itself.

One new technique learned

One of my sewing affirmations for 2009 was to learn at least two new sewing techniques.

As many of you know from reading here, I hate to do much hand sewing. I don't think I am very good at it; plus my right hand hurts when I do a lot of hand sewing. I have always attached my linings to zipper tape by hand. However, most of the time I just don't like the look of it when I am through.

While thumbing through the book "Easy Guide to Sewing Linings", I found a section on attaching linings to invisible zippers. Thus I tried with much success the first time when I completed the Butterick skirt recently. When finishing up the Vogue skirt, I decided to try it again. I am pleased that the results were good again. So this will become my method of choice from now on. Here are two photos showing the attached lining to visible zipper.

I sometimes ask myself why did I not know this before. I have been sewing forever. I know that no one taught this to me either and of course, did not figure it out on my own. I have found this book to be one of the most helpful books on linings and I highly suggest it to others as well.

Sewing today

I spent some time this AM and PM sewing on my dress. I felt like I was spinning my wheels for awhile this AM. It actually started last night with sewing the front bodice and back bodice to skirt pieces. Both top and bottom have darts that are somewhat unusual angles and placements. It is important to mark these darts carefully and noticeably. When you attach the bodice to the skirt, the darts need to line up.

My dress fabric is rather loosely woven and slightly slippery. The markings were better marked on one piece than the other, thus requiring me to make sure that the darts on both sides of the center front matched up. All of this created a challenge for matching top to bottom at waistline. Susan Khalje (sp) on some of her sewing shows talked about breaking seams up into parts to allow for getting pieces to align correctly. So I followed her techniques and stitched the darted part first, then continued stitching from the darts to the side seams.

Here are photos of the back and front showing the darts alignment.

After doing this, I basted the side seams and back seams to try on for fitting. This fabric as I noted above is loosely woven and drapey. I found that I needed to take a deeper dart at the armhole and deeper darts in the back darts as well. It is interesting that the lining unit fit well without the deeper darts in the front armhole but I did think that I needed to take deeper darts in the back for the lining as well. This clearly reinforces the need to fit both lining and fabric units before attaching due to the variance in the weight, body and hang of the fabric.

I am also deviating from the pattern instructions for attaching the collar and the lining, particularly since I am using a full lining instead of just lining the bodice. Not only that, but their instructions for attaching the collar just does not make since and not as sewing efficient as I think they could be.

I really thought that this dress would go together quickly. Again because of extras that I have done and working striving for perfection, this is going slower than I had thought or planned. More photos and progress report later.

McCalls Dress Lining

McCalls Dress Lining
Originally uploaded by Danvillegirl

Front view of the Reese's Peanut Butter lining on AlmaMarie.

Front closeup

Front closeup
Originally uploaded by Danvillegirl

Close up of the front darts that give this dress a nice look.

Armhole dart

Armhole dart
Originally uploaded by Danvillegirl

Here is view of the armhole dart I added when making the FBA.

Closeup Back Lining

Closeup Back Lining
Originally uploaded by Danvillegirl

This is a close up view of the back. You can see how the darts line up in the back bodice and skirt.

Back view

Back view
Originally uploaded by Danvillegirl

I made progress on my McCall's dress today. I call this my Caramel and Chocolate lining or Reese's Peanut Butter lining. I did not have enough of the bodice lining fabric to cut out the skirt lining. The dress fabric is a brown that is closer to the golden brown of the bodice lining.