Butterick 6333 - A Sewing Fail

Before I discuss this sewing fail, let me announce the winner of Barbara's book, 
"SEW The Garment-Making Book of Knowledge: Real-Life Lessons from a Serial Sewist."  I used the Random Generator entering 119 entries...

...and the winner is:

TONI WADE!

Please forward your email address to me (my email addy is cnorman underscore 98 at yahoo dot com) BY THURSDAY, JUNE 14th and I will forward it to Barbara who will mail you the book! Congratulations!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

After making shirts during the first quarter of the year, I really want to keep using those sewing skills.  I have loads of shirtdress patterns in my pattern stash and after going through them I chose Butterick 6333 as one of my Sewcation makes.

Honestly, after making this dress I've decided that I don't like waisted shirtdresses. I have my own personal issues with my protruding backside and these type of shirtdresses just emphasize it and my abundant abdomen. So the sewing fail is due to style and not the pattern or fabric choice!

However, since I'm in a new phase of my life, I wanted to add a straight and a full skirted shirtdress to my wardrobe.  I thought if I could succeed in getting a full skirted version to work, it would allow me to play with fabrics, specifically border print fabrics that require a seam.

I like my Lenox version by Cashmerette Patterns and it is a full skirt shirtdress. However, I wanted to try the typical buttoned up neckline of a more traditional shirtdress without the waistband. 

Well after sewing this one up, I won't be making more of these AT ALL. This dress has confirmed my dislike of waisted dresses. I was so disappointed in this dress that I took an hour and found almost all of the patterns I'd purchased with that type of waistline and put them in the pile of patterns I'm donating to the Baltimore DeStash.

When I sewed for my corporate life, I would've never sewn this type of dress. I don't know why I thought by changing jobs this style would work now, cause it doesn't. I'm sure some of you will be tempted to write about how great it looks...and it did photograph well. I'm just not comfortable in the dress because it emphasizes my backside AND that's what's most important. So please don't tell me to keep or make it up in another fabric because I'm so over this pattern/style.

Also I wanted to show that not everything I make works and to tell you that this dress almost blew up my sewcation.  It was my second make and neither this nor the first one blew me away...so I started to doubt myself. Yeah it got that serious up in here. *LOL* But it was the beginning of my sewcation and I couldn't walk away from my sewing machine...if I did I might as well go back to work...so I sucked it up and kept sewing.

After making a few more pieces and getting to a sewing zen state, I came up with an idea on how to repurpose this dress. Hopefully, before the summer is over, I will have repurposed it and will share that here too.

One administrative note ~
For those who have had issues with leaving comments lately the note below was on top of my dashboard last weekend, "Blogger no longer supports OpenID. Existing OpenID comments and your OpenID settings may have changed." So if that's how you left comments, I'm sorry you will be unable to do so now. I have no control over this since I use blogger as my blogging platform and they are making the change.

Next up on the blog is my version of the Montrose Top.

...as always more later!

Some So-So Concord Tee Hacks

I thought it was important to share two Concord Tee hacks that didn't quite work out as I'd planned. I know it seems like experienced sewists turn out beautiful garment after beautiful garment. However, I don't know about anyone else but sometimes I have less than spectacular results. I believe it's important to keep it real and share the losers as well as the winners!

So here is the first one ~

I am calling this one a failure. I bought this white & black polka dot lace from Fabric Mart a couple of months ago...maybe late 2016. I've always wanted a slouchy top from it. I thought I could use the Concord Tee to achieve that look.

First the top is too tight. While the lace has some stretch, it doesn't have enough. I thought on it and added some triangle inserts into the sides hoping it would help. It doesn't. Now the top just looks sloppy not slouchy. 

The sleeves are also too tight. Why? Because not enough stretch. These could be shortened and it would relieve some of the stress. 

Even though the pictures make the neckline work, it doesn't in real life. Again this could be fixed by adding the band that I omitted. 

I could fix all of these issues and make this work but I've got other things to sew and am calling uncle. I'm admitting that my fabric + pattern hack just didn't work the way I wanted it to.

I tried my black maxi dress with this too and it looked just as bad as this black ponte skirt does. Though my daughter did take some amazing photos of this fail!

The second one is a black tee with a ruffle ~ 

Technically it isn't a fail until I turn around...

See I added a ruffle to the tee because I wanted more than just a black tee. Why? A black tee is a staple in almost every woman's wardrobe, why did I feel I needed to do more to make it special?

So the ruffle cups right underneath my backside.  You can see it better here...

I just find this look so unattractive from the back and side views.  Though to be honest, the top is quite cute from the front...

This is the look I was going for and would actually wear this to work.  Now though, I'm totally on the fence about this tee. 

To solve this, I could cut the ruffle off and hem the top to have a normal tee. Or I could cut the top off around the top of my hip and add a lace peplum, which would be great. I even looked in a couple of my fave trim stores in NYC for a lace that was precut but found nothing in a price point I wanted to pay. I'm sure I have a lace in the fabric collection that I could use but I've been to lazy to look. 

Or I could just wear it as it is...

BTW, I've lightened the heck out of these pictures so you could see the ruffle details, cause as we all know black is hard to photograph.

These tops have been hanging on my wall for about a month. The polka dot one is definitely going to be disassembled. I will save the scraps to use in a future garment. The black one will have some alteration done to it...even if it is just removing the ruffle...so it hangs waiting for me to be inspired. Though now that I've seen these pictures I may be a little more willing to figure something out! *LOL*

I've been home from vacation for a week. My sewing mojo obviously went on vacation with me since I'm struggling to come up with ideas to sew. I don't think it helps that I have a back log of things I've photographed for the blog but haven't worn in real life yet. Working only four days a week in the city and one day at home, definitely affects what I wear. Especially since I tend to make garments quicker in the summer than in other seasons, thus the back log.

I know that I've been desiring some woven dresses with a looser fit. I have a ton of maxidresses, short tank dresses from ITY knits and a wardrobe of t-shirt dresses now. I would also like a couple of shirtdresses but those take more effort than I have in my sewing tank right now.  So we shall see what comes out of my sewing machine...

...as always more later!