Recently I’ve been doing a lot of little sewing, including altering some shirts and making these arm warmers from some old socks that no longer go over my gargantuan runner’s calves. Here’s the tutorial I used, and here’s the end result:

But that post isn’t about my little projects. It’s about getting rid of a big project. So let’s start again.

I made a thing! I need to get rid of it.
Here it is:

What:

I followed this pattern for what I hoped would be a cute, flattering dress with ruffles around all the curves and a fitted midsection. I chose one of Taylor’s old button-up shirts for the waist and back to give the sleek sections a flattering, pin-stripe look, used an old white tshirt for the chest, and a single, old, black Think Geek tshirt for the skirt.

What worked:

In general, I think the fabrics were the correct choices. I do think the shape of the dress is appealing, and I also like the relatively subtle subtitle the limited wording on the skirt provides.

What didn’t work:

Here’s the important part, and the reason I’d like to give this dress away — I made it the complete wrong size! I didn’t bother to look at the size-to-measurements listed, and assumed I would need to make the pattern at a size 10, like I had the last one. Silly me, this is a Misses pattern, with the measurements to fit a teenager! So, the waist is way too small for me to ever wear. I realized this toward the middle when I tried on the bodice and found there was no way I could fasten it. Ever.

Anyway, instead of abandoning the project, I decided to finish it and give it away. So, if I have a slender friend with a waist of 29 inches or less, and you like this dress, or know someone who would fit this criteria, drop me a note on Twitter, Facebook, or the comments. I’ll even mail it.

Otherwise it’s going to Goodwill. Maybe someone will love it.

Footnote:

I’d never done snaps before, and I decided to give it a try. I did an absolute amateur job, half finishing before I found this incredibly useful tutorial.

The snaps, as they are, will hold just fine, but the spacing isn’t perfectly even. I should have gone with the zipper option.

What:

A new wrap shirt improvised from the pattern for the bodice of the wrap dress I recently made.

Why:

I had some problems the wrap dress, which you might recall:

a) Too big
b) Wrong material for the bodice front interface
c) Not topstitching when I wanted to.

I decided to tackle the wrap dress bodice again, just to get the dimensions right. The idea being I could always throw a skirt on if I felt like the bodice was the right size.

So I made the bodice, fixing what I had done incorrectly. I used a free shirt I’d gotten from a conference and a tshirt that I’d gotten as part of a grab-bag. (Word to the wise: if a tshirt company is doing a grab-bag deal, you’re going to get the tshirts no one wanted in your size. Taylor ordered one extra-large and got the girliest thing he’d ever seen. This became the back of my new creation.)

What worked:

Everything that I predicted would work did: going down two sizes meant the whole thing fits more snugly. Changing the linings helped with the stiffness. Topstitching gives the whole thing structure. I also, to go ahead and brag a bit, recycled two ribbons I’d gotten for free to make the belt. It was a complete fluke that I used Taylor’s button-up shirt for the lower part of the bodice–a choice I made completely based on the color.

What didn’t work:

The bodice is still quite… generous in the chest. In fact, I was about to abandon the entire project for being too obscene when I realized I still had a perfectly good man’s shirt upstairs that I could sew into the rest of the wrap. That’s when I added the collar. Now I can actually wear this without something underneath.

Onward:

All that being said, I think my work with this pattern is over. I look forward to trying out something else next.

What:

I made another thing. Here it is:

It uses a relatively standard pattern for a women’s wrap dress, but I got a little silly with the idea and made it out of Taylor’s old tshirts.

Why:

You might remember from my post on Taylor’s shirt that I grew up considering brand-new clothes a luxury. It’s a luxury I’ve indulged more as an adult, but I still only go to buy new clothes a couple times a year. Meanwhile, Taylor shops a lot, especially as he continues to lose weight. In the last year we’ve thrown about 80% of his clothes into the sewing heap. That means lots of XL and XXL tshirts. With that much fabric, I either needed to make a blanket or a dress. And the dress won.

I’ve also watched enough women in my family age to know that the time of dressing like a teenager is over. In my early 20s I started watching what women wear as we fill out (especially in the middle) and I’ve come to two conclusions: 1) Pants are rarely flattering 2) Wrap dresses look good on almost everyone.

What worked:

I misread the instructions and thought I needed fusible lining for the whole dress — a mistake I only realized when I went seeking 45″ fusible lining for the skirt and could only find 22″. I had already purchased and cut out the fusible lining for the bodice of the dress, though, so I went ahead and used that. (I used an old sheet for the skirt’s lining.)

Fusible lining gives fabrics a stiffness, like a permanent starch, that worked really well for the arms and back of the bodice, giving it nice structure. The front of the bodice… well, I’ll get into that in the next section.

Surprising as it might be, I also really like the feel of the tshirt dress. The fact that these are old tshirts means the skirt drapes really nicely, and feels cozy, like old pajamas. Sewing with old fabric also keeps the item from looking too crisp, like construction paper, the way much homemade clothing does.

What didn’t work:

The fusible lining worked great for the back of the bodice, but the front is supposed to be drapey and clingy, which is not happening. Next time the front lining will need to be something else, like a very fine linen.

I also went too big. Sewing patterns tend to run quite small, and according to the package measurements, I’m a size 14. But I have a bad habit of not using all the seam allowance they give me, so I probably should know enough to always go down a size, especially with stretchy fabrics. Add to that the fact that my fusible interfacing slightly stretched the material, and I could probably stand to go down to a 12 or 10 in the future.

I’ll improve the belt next time too. This belt made from tshirts is too flimsy. I had a hunch I should topstitch it to give it more structure, but when the pattern didn’t call for it, I didn’t do it.

I also took too much on at once. I finished the dress over the weekend with two 7+ hour days of sewing. I know better than that. When I get tired, I cut corners and make mistakes. Next time I’ll impose a hard limit on per-day sewing.

Onward:

I’m going to try this pattern again soon, but not next. Next thing I am going to work on a simple pillow blanket using some Jade Gordon fabric I bought off of Spoonflower. That should only take me a weekend, and be ready while it’s still cold outside.

Surprise action shot!

What:

I made a thing. Here it is:

It uses a relatively standard pattern for a men’s button-up shirt. Taylor picked the pattern on a whim, and the lady at the sewing store was very helpful in making sure I got enough fabric and iron-on fusible interfacing. That’s good, because all the numbers on the back of the pattern were gobbledegook to me.

Why:

I have a complicated attitude toward clothes. In my youth I shopped almost exclusively at thrift stores, where $20 would get you 5 pieces of clothing. Once I got married, Taylor became increasingly uncomfortable with shopping at thrift stores.

“Someone probably died in that,” he would say. (Perhaps it helped that my primary interest at thrift stores was the kind of men’s trousers preferred by the elderly.)

So I moved up to JC Penney’s. Extravagance! I know. That worked well when I was in my 20s and fashion prefered women with curves. That is not the case right now. The oversized burlap sack on leggings look turns me into a walking pillow.

So why a shirt for Taylor? I always do better work when sewing for someone else, for one thing. Plus, well, he seemed excited about it.

What worked:

I will begin by admitting that I grew up in a house with a lot of home sewing, but I also had virtually no patience for it. I attribute this to my learning style, which is very much a “follow the directions” route, not meshing with my Mom’s teaching style. Our sewing machines were always second hand, so we never had an instruction manual. So when the bobbin needed to be replaced or the needles rethreaded, all work ceased until Mom could fix it.

The two most important tools for this project were the sewing machine and the internet. Despite being labeled as “Easy,” the pattern still contained a lot if jargon I didn’t know: nap, shelvage, slipstich… I was able to look at the internet for video tutorials and at my sewing machine manual for further hints and tips.

I also bought my first iron. No looking back now.

What didn’t work:

I made a few mistakes on this shirt, but none probably as consequential as the last: I forgot to take into account seam allowance when sewing my buttonholes and ended up putting them too far from the edge. Now the fabric sort of flaps over, and will probably wave jauntily in the breeze. I am trying to come up with some way to fix this, but I’m concerned that anything I try will make it more obvious.

Another challenge was the material. Taylor chose a knit, which, of course, led to stretching issues. I know knits can be a pain, but I want to work with old tshirts, so this was good practice. I took things slowly and relied heavily on stay stitches (this was a new term).

Other than that, I just need to practice my slipstitch work — the tedious stuff that’s all done by hand.

Onward:

I’ve got a pattern for a wrap dress, so I’m trying that next. A nice, summery dress — I might even finish it before autumn.

Surprise action shot!