So I had been working on McCall's 5927 dress, view D.
Adorable dress and I loved the pockets. But even when I picked up the pattern envelope, I felt that the drawings looked fierce but the live photos looked rather frumpy. Seriously, the long-sleeved blue dress on the right is fairly tragic, right??
There was also a little voice that told me to rethink the bodice. I mean, only two darts on the front? Yeah, maybe for a B cup, but more mass than that surely should use at least one more dart. I ignored the voice. Besides -- POCKETS!
The voice was right. The top was bad. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. It’s not like I’m swinging punching bags up there or anything, but jeepers was it not flattering. That’s what I get for throwing caution to the wind.
So after I put on the dress, swore and stomped, I tore it off and kicked it across the bathroom & then threw it in the trash before I could get a picture of it. It looked as bad as you imagine.
It's been a while since I had a real fail from a finished product so I needed to rebound with something cute, STAT. I jumped in to the Victoriana Cardigan I blogged about in my last post. I pretty much copied Kayte Terry's sweater to the T.
I took this sweater my sister-in-law gave me (one of these days I'll tell you more about her -- she gives me tons of fabulous hand me downs). It's a brown wool that pills to DEATH, but it's warm and cozy so I don't mind too much. It's the kind of sweater that will get really loose by the end of one wearing, so I though it would be perfect for the Victoriana Cardigan.
I just cut it up the center and embellished with the felt pictured above. Here's what I ended up with:
It's so fun and feminine. And it has ruffles!
I love the little flowers. Do you guys know how to make these? Super dooper easy, and you can make them with paper too. I'll have to put up a tute about it, I just love them.
My palate is clensed, and now I feel much better. I hope you're all dry! It rained cats & dogs here today.
Sorry about your dress, but your cardigan is fabulous!!
ReplyDeleteI want that cardi! :)
ReplyDeleteThat cardy is so fabulous! I had been thinking it was made from an existing cardigan but now that you say it's from a sweater it opens up the possibilities much wider. I have a merino top that is snuggly but loses its shape something awful after one wearing, to the point where it's just hideous. But it might lend itself to something like this - hmmm... So is the ruffle just sewn along the neckline pretty much as it looks like it was? Any special trick to it? Not that I can really face anything snuggly and warm right now with the heat and humidity here. But hopefully winter will come eventually!
ReplyDeleteWow, there's a marvellous bit of repurposing - that is sooo clever! I find repurposing really tricky - just don't have the ability to look at something askance and go, ooh, I know, I'll snip here and tuck here and shove in a couple of thingybobs here and a button and hey presto! Bob's your uncle!
ReplyDeleteSo well done. And a million thanks for your comment on my blog - lovely to meet you. Come see me again - I'm going to have a good rummage through all your sewing bits today!
x x x
Catherine
Eeee! That is so cute!!
ReplyDeletethat cardigan is truly fabulous. LOVE!
ReplyDeleteThanks loves!!! Kayte Terry is truly to thank for the inspiration. I used her book Complete Embellishing which has this pattern, & I highly recommend everyone purchase it. I could never have come up with this on my own.
ReplyDeleteJacqui, to answer you, what I did was cut up the center of the sweater, then cut it some more at an angle so that it was more of a loooong v-neck shape. Then I took some left over twill tape I had chillin' and sewed it to the front of the cardi. Then I opened that out and sewed the felt ruffle to that -- at this point the ruffle was pointing outward. I then flipped the ruffle in and sewed that down, so it was then facing in. Do I make sense? Written instructions never make sense to me, I need pictures. I could do a tute...
Anyway, the reason I did that is because I was worried that the sweater would stretch when sewing (I hate knits and also do not have a serger, making them generally wonky when I sew them). I figured the twill tape would give it more structure, which it did.