Knockoff #2, sorta

Wow! Second post in a week, that’s like a record or something, isn’t it? I decided to tackle yet another project from my Inspired post a few couple of months ago. Well….that’s not completely true. I actually jumped right into this one following the first knockoff, but then it needed some reworking, and I wasn’t feeling like doing it, so it just sat, unloved on my dressform. Or at least, the muslin version did. Because I hate to say it, but this one’s not getting a “final” version. I’m calling my muslin wearable and moving on.

This was when I was trying to decide how much angle I wanted–I ultimately chose the steeper one, but wish I would have went even steeper for maximum effect.

 

I tried to take some pics of it (in the mirror) on me, but it’s too dark and cloudy today for them to be decent, and my dressform matches my body pretty exact anyway…except that I have arms. 😉

 

Cute, right? Well, it did give me a few fits, so it had better be! I used Jalie 2805 as the base, determined where I thought the slant should be, slashed the pattern, added in my seam allowances and happily cut into some fabrics that were actually remnants from other projects that you can see here and here (those are some seriously old scraps!!). It actually went together really smoothly, right up until I tried it on before hemming it. At that point I realized that somehow, even using the knit stay tape to stabilize before sewing my diagonal seaming it got stretched a bit. And that stretching made for some ugly wrinkly bits near my armpits. So I put it on my dressform and it sat there for a couple of months while I worked up the motivation to take out 4 serged seams. I unpicked it all the other day, retraced the pattern piece, and yesterday using a very unscientific method, I laid the pattern on what I assumed was basically the center front (I’m too lazy to actually mark these things!) and scooped out the armholes and took a smidgen off of the top corner of the side seam. It worked!! So I sewed the sleeves back on, sewed the side seams, and even hemmed it!

I tried something a bit different with the neck opening this time. I pretty much always use knit stay tape (those strips of iron on interfacing), but this time I used it more like a bias binding. I think it gives the look of having a neck band without actually having a neck band (the neckline was pretty much perfect, so I didn’t want to make it smaller/higher). Here’s a closeup of that detail.

To do this you stitch (I serged) the non-fusible side to the right side of the blouse, then *very carefully* press it to the inside for 8 seconds to fuse it. It’s a bit fiddly, but I like the clean finish+stability.

Then I just twin needle hemmed it on the 5/8″ mark on my sewing machine. It looks like there’s a band unless you look *really* closely.

 

But yes, this is the muslin, it is wearable, and no, I’m not going to make another. Which is probably better anyway, because the design lines are rather distinctive, and I really like the fabric combo. I mean, I did want them to somewhat match when I chose them from the scrap pile, but they really worked better than I thought they might. So even though it took some trial and error (and probably not as bad as I make it sound), I quite like the end result. 🙂 I think it’s fairly similar to the original:

You’ll notice I changed the pattern. And I didn’t have enough fabric to make the one sleeve different.

 

I haven’t decided what’s next, I have too many ideas flitting around in my brain and no idea which one to choose. Do you ever have that problem? If I’m going to make one though, I should probably get started on a Christmas dress. As slow as my progress is, I’ll still be hard pressed to get it done in time!