The Final Defeat Vogue 1177

I've been brainstorming quite a bit about the sleeve dilemma with the Vogue 1177 blouse. After measuring my bicep and measuring (too late) the bicep on the pattern, I discovered that they are the same. Meaning no ease for my arm whatsoever.

 

I then pulled out the last muslin I made, the Burda 7189 blouse, and measured that altered sleeve at the bicep to determine my true fitted bicep measurement. Two and three-fourths inches difference.

 

This is not a complete fail. I have learned to measure first. Every single time. No excuses. If I'm too lazy to do that I need to go read or clean the bathtub instead of sewing.

 

I learned the value of keeping the original muslins. Just find a hanger and put it in the closet.

 

I learned the value of making notes as I alter the muslin. I have half a page of notes on the Burda 7189 and I referred to them several times while working on the Vogue blouse. Keeping track of back waist length, how much to lower the bust, and the width of the finished sleeve cuff were useful.

 

Most importantly, I learned not to just throw a project away too soon. After thinking about the Vogue 1177 sleeve for a couple of days, it dawned on me that the sleeve was a two-piece sleeve and there was still a possibility I could make it work. Here are the two sleeve sections, the upper cap piece and the lower piece. Notice that the lower piece is tucked. Which means it is wider (It is folded in the photo). And notice that the bicep of the sleeve is in the lower wider section:

 

I realized that I could eliminate some of the tucks in the lower section, making the sleeve wider at the bicep. I made that alteration and split the upper sleeve section. Here is the result.

This seriously reduced the sleeve cap height. I have no extra fabric. This option was not possible because in order for it to fit and hang correctly I would have to cut new sleeve pieces.

So as a last ditch attempt I decided to just put in the upper cap sleeve portion and have nice little capped sleeves instead of beautiful tucked sleeves. Too tight in the upper arm. No arm movement possible. Think tourniquet, if you will.

So this blouse is now officially a dud. It's going in the muslin closet and after a million years have gone by and I've gotten over it, I'm going to recut these sleeves out of something random and put them in. As I've said before, I love the style but hate the pattern. And you can bet I'm keeping the notes I've made.

Onward. Another pattern is up for a muslin.

Dismayed! Vogue 1177

After tons of thread tracing, basting, reconfiguring tucks on the bodice fronts, backs, and sleeves, I finally set in the sleeves on the dress/top/blouse/whatever.

And the sleeves are too tight. I don't have more fabric to cut new ones.

The sleeves are gorgeous, by the way. Love the style of this, love the tucks, love the design.

Hate the pattern itself. It is NOT drafted correctly. NONE of the tucks are correct. Not the front bodice tucks, not the back bodice tucks, and goodness gracious alive, not the sleeve tucks either.

I have the skirt and casing already assembled. All I have left to do is sew on the front bands, serge two seams, and make buttonholes.

I should have compared the sleeves to the the Burda sleeves I just fitted. Should have, could have, too late now.

I'm trying to figure out how to salvage this one.

Any ideas out there?

Hitchhiker

On my way out of JoAnn's the other day, an old woman stuck her thumb out and wanted me to give her a ride. So I did.

Then she wanted to come in the house, too. So she did.

Then she wanted to see my sewing room. So she did that, too.

Then she told me she wanted to live here. She promised not to eat too much, she said I wouldn't have to send her to college, and she said she would put up with all these cats. Pet them, even.

So now she lives with me. Meet Grandma:

She was naked, and that just wouldn't do. So I threw this on her, Vogue 1177:

She really likes it. A lot.

Vogue 1177 An Hour And A Half Later

After an hour and a half of my life essentially wasted fooling around with the front bodice pieces of this dress/top, I had this mess.

You can see in the top photo that the lower bodice is tucked and overlaid onto the upper bodice.

Each section has tucks. The top section has five and the lower section has seven.

These two pieces DO NOT line up correctly. Repeat, DO NOT.

Before I cut this pattern out of my fabric I looked on Pattern Review and saw only seven reviews. One of the seamstresses had trouble getting these pieces to work together. That is why I spent so much time chalk marking and rulerizing (great word, I just made it up) and checking and comparing and measuring and thread tracing every single tuck, notch, dot, circle, folding, stitching line, you name it on my cut pieces.

The lady was absolutely right. The bottom photo above shows just how far off the pieces are. After I finally accepted the obvious evidence, I had to lie down on the floor in the dark for a few minutes because I do not EXPECT this sort of thing from Vogue patterns.

So I just added another tuck to the lower bodice piece on the center front edge to make it line up, and next thing you know I have this.

Don't point out that you can't see crap in this photo. What matters most here is that I KNOW I fixed it. Otherwise, it would have truly been a waste of my time.

This is a better photo. Hard to photograph, sorry about that.

Onward.

Vogue 1177 In The Works

Busy today finishing up the marking and thread tracing while a pot roast is on the stove. Due to the strep situation, upstairs in the sewing room is too close for comfort, since all the patients are hanging out up there.

Ready to thread up the serger and change out the needle on the sewing machine.

More later. Thanks for stopping by!

Now I'm Ticked Off

Geez, I just wrote the greatest blog post ever. It was witty, funny, sarcastic, informative, inspirational, and perfectly divine, with just the right amount of griping thrown in for good measure.

And Blogger just ate it.

Just for sake of asking, does anyone out there know what happens to your stuff when you are typing along, smiling, singing a happy little sewing song in your sweet little head while Blogger constantly saves your stuff every three seconds automatically, and all of a sudden you get distracted by a cat, causing you to hit the wrong key on the keyboard, and your wonderful stuff just disappears? And if it was automatically saving the whole time, WHERE IN THE WORLD DID IT GO?

I wrote about this:

 And this:

And Vogue 1177. And thread tracing. And chalk pencils. And strep throat. And nerds.

Wardrobe Plan Colors

This is the fabric I'm using for Vogue 1177, the top/dress, a crepe de chine with a black background with several shades of brown, camel, and ivory dots. I can't remember where it came from, or when:

 

I can already tell that it is going to fray and shred and make a mess in the sewing room. But that's okay. Right now there are four people in this house with very active cases of strep throat and so far I am not one of them. Hanging out in the sewing room with a vacuum cleaner suits me just fine.

 

I have been collecting brown toned fabrics for the past year. This has been deliberate.

 

Before retiring early, I taught high school and college. The main school colors were black and red (at one school) and black and grey (at the other school). As a result I wore a lot of black--tops, coats, shirts, pants, shoes, you name it. I want to do something DIFFERENT. So brown is my chosen color for the Wardrobe Plan.

 

Here are two more recent additions to the pile. Pretty sure these came from Joann's or Hancock. These want to be tops of some sort.

And here is a strep throat patient who is helping out by holding one of these ten million kitties around here. These cats are wearing me out.

 

That is one pretty Little Girl with Long Tailed Louie.

Vogue 1177

Sometimes not having the perfect fabric for a desired pattern is a good thing. Since I was unable to find something suitable for the Burda 7189 blouse, I spent time making sure my pattern alterations were accurate and writing an extensive note to myself about them. I'm still anxious to make the blouse, but in the meantime I've been cutting out this Anna Sui pattern, Vogue 1177.

 

 

The pattern photo doesn't show off all the neat details of this dress--which I am planning to wear as a top with slim pants, so here is the line drawing from the Vogue website:

Of course I like the neat pleating on the sleeves and yokes, but a real surprise is the bodice armhole pieces. As a bonus, there is a bias slip pattern, too. I'm thinking how nice that would be just to have in the closet.

I've cut out most of the fabric already and I hope to finish the cutting tonight. After measuring the flat pattern I didn't think I would need to make alterations for the loose fit style.

The basic color for my Wardrobe Plan is dark chocolate brown, since I seem to have so much fabric in that color but hardly anything that color in my current closet. A big change is coming as I move away from a black based wardrobe into the brown family.

Picture of the crepe de chine I'm using for this pattern coming soon....

Thanks for reading, as always.