Monday, October 29, 2007

Lust / Stashing (Patterns)


What I'd like to find is a blouse pattern that looks like this Roland Mouret jacket, though I'm not sure how it would look on me, considering that my ribcage and my waist are much closer together than the tall young thin thing wearing the original. That's a project for a long, cold winter, drafting something of that magnitude.

I've tried to be good lately about the pattern thing. There are so many that I haven't tried, so many issues of BWOF that are calling out to be pillaged. So how is it that I ended up on Patternreview, ordering KS 3533 (a Duro-type dress out of knit fabric), Burda 7898, an almost exact replica of a dress they did in a BWOF issue last year, and New Look 6732, because I have almost no blouse patterns and I realize that my anti-blouse bias has always been because they don't fit properly. When I made my first Simplicity 7086, it was a revelation - the buttons didn't gap, it didn't ride up, it fit close to my body without being tight. I wanted more. I made another one, and refined the length and sleeves, and played with the buttons a little. More.

Thus NL 6732, which seems like a well-shaped basic - it has 4 collar options, 4 sleeve options (many more once I play with it a little), and it looks like it's a good length. At most it takes 1 3/4 yards, so I can probably scare up that much fabric. Easily.

Then, just when I thought it was safe, I got an email from Vogue. Bastards. Another $6.99 sale. And since their patterns are $25 - how did that happen? It's obscene - I had to buy a few. Two more Vintage Vogues, both dresses, and a Sandra Betzina blouse pattern, 7903, which to me has great faux-vintage potential with its series of 3 small darts in the front and two long, shaping darts in the back. I could actually do without the goofy cuffs on all variations of the shirt, but isn't that the joy of sewing? Looking at what the pattern company gives you and saying, "Nah, I don't think so."
As an example of that, the two dress patterns I mentioned above, are being done backward. The Burda bias cut dress, which is meant to be done in a woven (velvet in their photo and in my mind), is being made, albeit very carefully, in a copper brown stretch velvet. With an invisible zipper, hallelujah, now that I can put them in. And the KS Duro dress just doesn't do it for me in a knit when I have so many wovens that need taking care of. And because I truly hate hemming knits. It only requires a 25% stretch, so I'm thinking that if I cut one size larger than my usual, I should be able to make it work.

We'll see, won't we?

No comments: