My husband asked me recently why the things I make for myself are never as carefully-made as the things I make for other people. The answer is probably “I’m always in a hurry when I make things for myself, because I feel as though I should be spending all my time on my work instead”… but at the time I protested mightily and said that of course that wasn’t true!
And then I made this.
At first glance, it looks okay. It’s a 1993 fit-and-flare shirt dress, Vogue 1290, view C. I’ve had the pattern… not quite since 1993, but it was certainly one of the first that I bought when I started sewing from patterns in the late ’90s. (It’s not just me who has 20-something year old uncut patterns in their stash, surely?)
I checked the size chart, checked the actual garment measurements… and yet it’s still come out far too small. I forgot to make my usual short waist adjustment (I usually shorten the bodice pieces by about an inch), so the narrowest part of the dress sits below my waist, making it bunch upwards. And despite the garment measurements allegedly having a fair amount of ease over and above my body measurements, it’s turned out to be far too tight all over. To the point where if I overlap the front pieces to put the buttons in, I’ve got no hope of actually fastening them.
I’ve bought a bright orange zip from Ebay. I’m going to stitch that in, and hope for the best.
And then there’s the most enormous elephant in the room, which is that the print IS CLEARLY UPSIDE DOWN on the front panels and one of the sleeves. *sigh*
I didn’t have enough fabric to make the dress, so I bought another piece, meaning that I was working with two 2-metre lengths. I had it all very carefully worked out so that I could fit the back panels on one piece, the front panels on the other, and a sleeve on each, shortening the dress slightly to fit. Sadly, the thing I didn’t carefully work out was whether the two pieces of fabric were the same way up when I started cutting out. And OF COURSE the upside down pieces are on the front. That’s just the way these things happen.
Anyway. If the dress fits once I’ve got the zip into the front, I’ll wear it anyway. Hopefully people will be too busy saying “oooh, glow in the dark skeleton Darth Vader!” to notice that he and ghostly R2-D2 are actually upside down. Fingers crossed.
I have to admit that I did think twice about sharing such a glaringly obvious mistake with you all. Then I decided that, you know what? It doesn’t matter how experienced you are, at pretty much anything, occasionally you’ll still make a really silly mistake – and sometimes it’ll be a really big one!
To make myself feel better I sewed the world’s simplest sweatshirt dress afterwards, which cheered me up no end. I’ll show you photos very soon.