Colette Pastille: WTF

When last we spoke about my Pastille dress, I was doing a mommy-tummy adjustment on the skirt.  The plan was that if that went okay, I would then make one final muslin of the bodice that incorporated all of the changes, sew them together and make one last check for fit.

I made this skirt and tried it without the bodice:

The old, stand-on-a-stool-so-you-can-see-your-skirt-in-the-
bathroom-mirror trick.  I really need a full-length mirror
in the living room where my sewing machine lives.

As you can see, it looks pretty good.  The side seam looks straight although it might be a tiny bit forward right at the waist.

So, I attached bodice muslin 3 to it to see how it looked:

Please excuse whatever was on the bathroom mirror.
Toothpaste maybe?  I dunno, I live with a 3 year old, it
could be anything.

Also not bad.  Actually, pretty good!

At this point, I got really excited and made up the bodice in the same red fabric as the skirt and sewed them together.

Disaster.

First, I thought I would use bias tape for the neckline instead of a facing because facings annoy me and that was a hot mess that I won't be repeating.  But, I figured it was fine, because I didn't really care about this fabric so I could throw it all away if I wanted.  But then, I looked in the mirror and I got so disgusted, I couldn't even take a picture.  The bodice felt funny.  Maybe from the mess at the neckline?  I dunno.  Worse there were diagonal pull lines in the front skirt.  Ugh!

I tried it on again today and this time I took pictures in order to share the horror:

Ignore my hair, I hadn't gotten ready for the day, yet.

I spent a lot of time trying to stand in the mirror in a way
that most obscures the mess on the floor behind me.

It looked like maybe the bodice was pulling the skirt up in the front so I let out the bodice seam in the front.  I overcast the seam allowances together so it's essentially got a 1/4" seam at the waistline:

Better, but I don't get why the bodice is suddenly too short.  I need to take it apart and compare it to the previous bodice muslin and the pattern piece.  At any rate, it looks like I need to add half and inch to the front bodice and front skirt.

There's still some pooling and wrinkling of fabric in the upper back of the bodice while the lower back is now looking a bit too tight (maybe?).  I need to pinch out the excess at the top and maybe fix the swayback adjustment, I think.

Whatever it needs, it's going into time-out for awhile to think about what it's done while I work on the Outfit Along (Bad, bad, bad Pastille!  Mommy is not happy with you!).  I'll pull it out once I've finished the dress for the Outfit Along (so, the end of July?).

Colette Pastille: Skirt muslin #2

So, when last we saw the Pastille muslin, I had finished bodice #3 and I was feeling pretty good about it having cut a smaller size in the waist and completed an FBA and a swayback adjustment.  The next step was to make a second muslin of the skirt.*  For this iteration, I had cut a smaller size and done a swayback adjustment.

Bathroom photos are the worst

What you can't really see is that it's still too baggy at the side seams in between the waist and hips.

Please ignore the potty chair in the background

 On the other hand, I have a textbook case of "prominent abdomen"**.

Here, I've taken in the sides of the skirt going from the waist to the hip and let it out a bit at my upper thighs.  That has helped with the prominent abdomen but it's still not quite right.

Next step is to try the pot-belly alteration for pencil skirts by Maria Denmark found on the By Hand London blog here.  Right after I took this picture, I drew a line just under my post-baby belly that curved up to the hipline, like on the tutorial.  Then, I cut along that line, let the fabric fall in front and pinned Swedish tracing paper to the skirt across the gap so that I could preserve the size of the gap when I took the skirt off.

Cutting line

Now, I need to transfer that slash and spread to the paper pattern, along with the seamline adjustments and cut a new muslin for the skirt.  Onward to skirt muslin #3!

*The first bodice muslin was so awful that I didn't bother making the skirt at the time, I just went straight to making a second bodice muslin.

**Or as I like to call it, post-baby belly.

Colette Pastille: Bodice Muslin #3

Crappy bathroom mirror photo at 12am
Not my best look

My 2nd Pastille bodice muslin was baggy at the waist and just a little too tight in the bust.  For this muslin, I went a size smaller for the waist and did a very small FBA.  This was very successful and I now feel the front of the bodice looks and feels like a sheath dress.  I probably could have added another 1/8" to the FBA to give me a tiny bit more ease in the bust.  Because it's so hard to find ready to wear fitted tops that actually do fit me right, I mostly wear knit fabrics.  So, I am not used to the feel of a fitted garment with no "give" to the fabric and as a result, the bust feels a little bit tight.  There is no pulling of the fabric across the bust, so the fit looks very good and I don't think I'm going to change it.

Another crappy bathroom photo.  I can see some wrinkling
here, but I think that might go away with the weight of the skirt.

After sewing the muslin and trying it on, I saw the back bodice dipped way down past my waist in the middle but not the sides.  So, I unpicked the zipper and did a swayback adjustment, removing about an inch from the middle tapering to nothing at the sides.  Yes, I do baste my zipper into my muslin.  Since I'm fitting the garment on myself, it is the only way to close the back properly so that I can check the fit.  I read a tip once that said to put the opening in the front of your garment for your muslin because that makes it easier to fit things on yourself without sewing in zippers.  I can see how that would help with the back, but what if you need to make adjustments to the front?  Won't having an opening there screw with how the front fits?  Anyway, I'm finding that basting an invisible zipper into the bodice takes almost no time at all, now that I've done it several times in a row.  Funny how that works.

I took some photos in the mirror so that I could try to see how it all looks, especially the back which is difficult to see otherwise.  I do see some wrinkling, but that goes away if I pull down on the bodice,  leading me to think that the weight of the skirt may take care of that once the skirt is attached. So, I'm moving on to skirt muslin #2 before trying to make any more changes to the bodice.  I'm also worried I may end up overfitting the bodice and since it feels pretty good when I have it on, I'm not sure I want to make any more changes!

Colete Pastille Muslin #2: So Much Better

I'm really glad I decided to cut a second muslin than attempt to fix my first sad muslin.  I did my measurements, made my changes to the paper pattern, cut and sewed the bodice and lo and behold and possibly verily, the fit was so much better it was hard to believe it was the same pattern!

Emboldened, I embarked on the skirt portion where I immediately ran into trouble.  Even armed with measurements, it was difficult to decide which size to cut.  I think this was partially a function of inexperience and not knowing how much ease I actually want in a garment.  But, I do think the pattern drafting is not totally blameless.  The ease in the pattern is 1.5 inches for the bust, 1 inch for the waist, and a bewildering 5 inches for the hip.  However, this is supposed to be a fitted sheath dress and in the book, Sarai says that "for a very close fitting garment, this might be 2" in the bust, 1/2" in the waist and 2" at the hips" (1).  And, looking at the picture of the model, I would guess that's about how much ease there is in the version of the dress she is wearing.

For myself, I compared my measurements with the finished garment measurements and then made sure I had the amount of ease the pattern called for.  As a result, I have an enormous skirt which I have taken in on the sides a lot.  A lot, a lot.  The middle back of the skirt was a hot mess until I did a swayback adjustment which made things somewhat better.  I'm tempted to keep messing with the skirt part of the muslin, but knowing how much better everything became for the bodice just from cutting a smaller size, I think I will recut the skirt in a smaller size and see how that looks before trying to make more changes.

The bodice still isn't perfect.  While the smaller size is definitely better, it's a little too tight in the bust (but not elsewhere), so I think I will need to do a very small full bust adjustment to get the fit right there.  I also still need to shave a little off of the side seams at the waist.  Finally, attaching the skirt made the back middle of the bodice droop (but not the sides) leading me to think I may need to do a swayback adjustment, but I might wait on that until I try a smaller size skirt to see if that makes a difference in the amount of length I want to remove in the swayback adjustment.

(1) Colette Sewing Handbook, p. 64

Colette Pastille First Muslin

Mmmm....pastilles.
[source]

Now that we are in spring, I have been feeling more inclined to sew.  Fall and winter are for knitting, spring and summer are for sewing.  I made a denim Miette (from Tilly and the Buttons; more on that later) and now I am working on the Pastille dress from the Colette Sewing Handbook*.  I just finished my first muslin and it is the epitome of why you should start with a muslin:  it looks terrible.  Baggy, the waistline is wrong, I may have cut out the wrong size bodice and the hips look funky.  It is so fugly, I was tempted to abandon the idea of making the Pastille altogether.  Half an hour later, though, I remembered why I started sewing this dress in the first place, even though I really have little need for a sheath dress:  I need to practice sewing.

I'm a firm believer in developing new skills and common sense says that the only way to get any better at them is to practice.  With every other skill I've cultivated, I have understood that I will need to practice before I will be any good at it, but with sewing, however, common sense seems to fly out the window.  I want to be good at it right now and if I'm not, I don't want to do it.  I've been trying to figure out why I'm so resistant to the idea that I will need to make an unspecified and probably rather large number of terrible garments before I will be able to make lovely ones and I think I've come up with a couple of reasons.

1.  Fabric isn't cheap and making a garment that goes straight into the trash feels like throwing away money.  I know some people obtain cheap fabric by buying old sheets or fabric at flea markets, yard sales, and second hand stores and all I can think is:  those people must have more time than I do.  I have yet to find old sheets at the goodwill near me, much less fabric yardage and so would need to visit several of these stores many times in order to get the cheap fabric and frankly, it's hard enough for me to find time to do laundry frequently enough to keep my family of three people in clean clothes.

2.  The only way to know if I have been successful in my sewing is to try the garment on.  This involves a whole lot of time looking at myself wearing something awful.  It's like going jeans shopping with the added downer that it is my fault the garment doesn't fit.  A dress form would likely help, but I can't afford one at the moment and I live in a very small apartment.  I think I might have to throw out the vacuum cleaner in order to have space in the closet for a dress form and since we have wall-to-wall carpeting and a toddler, that would not be a good idea.  Leaving a dress form out all the time is not an option, even if I could find a spot where we weren't tripping over it (see also:  destructive habits of a three year old).

The awkward moment when a friend's mom says make yourself at home so you pee on their couch
— Honest Toddler (@HonestToddler) March 23, 2015

If only I had a set of disembodied
hands to help me with fitting.

So, the only way to get better at sewing is to spend money and put on clothes that make me look like I'm wearing a sack.  Oh, and become a contortionist in order to do things like "pinch out fullness" on my muslin while I'm wearing it (I'm looking at you, swayback adjustment).  Recently, I've decided that I'm just going to have to suck it up, swallow my pride, and just make a bunch of ugly, ill-fitting garments so that I can one day make beautiful, well-fitting clothes that I love.  To that end, I decided to start working my way through the patterns I already own using the fabric I already own.  I'm fairly good at making an A-line skirt and a Renfrew-style t-shirt, so now it's time to work on woven dresses and tops.  Once I feel pretty confident about those, I might even start working on making that most dreaded of all garments, the Waterloo of home sewists everywhere:  pants.**

Before tracing the pattern for the Pastille dress, I took my measurements, added a little ease, and compared the end result to the finished measurements of the dress and chose what size(s) to trace.  Based on measurements, it seemed like I needed one size for the upper body and then grade out to a larger size for the waist.  Trying on the muslin, my waist looks rather baggy and sad, so clearly I added too much to the waist.  Also, the front waistline of the bodice was about an inch above my actual natural waist and the back waistline appeared to be nearly two inches below my natural waist.  After doing some Google searches on the Pastille dress, I found that many people have also had too much length in the back of their muslin and one or two have also had the front of the bodice be too short at the same time.

So, my current plan is to throw out my first muslin and start the second one by first tracing a smaller size bodice.  Then, I'm going to actually measure my torso from my shoulder to my waistline going through my bust apex and measure paper pattern at the same point (something I should have done in the beginning) and add length to the bodice front pattern piece.  For the back, I'm going to attempt to get my husband to measure my back length.*** Then, I'll again measure the paper pattern piece and shorten it accordingly.  For now, I'm not going to mess with the skirt, just fit the bodice. Once I have a nice fitting bodice, I'll work on the skirt which I anticipate will need a swayback adjustment.

Onward!

*Funny story:  my copy is signed twice!  I bought it from the Colette website so it came to me signed and then I got a chance to meet Sarai at a book signing/meetup in Oakland and she signed it for me in person

**And by pants I mean trousers, not underwear, although I've got a bunch of old t-shirts sitting in a pile, waiting for me to make underwear out of them

**As a scientist, you would think something as simple as taking a tape measure and determining the length of an object would be relatively easy for him, but as soon as you make that object a living thing, he gets confused (to be fair, he's a physicist, not a biologist, so living things confuse him--think of him as a cross between Sheldon and Leonard from Big Bang Theory).