Hawthorn - The wearable insanity

What do you call a person who not only makes her muslins both wearable and double sided? Insane. I guess that's what I am because I did that. 

The story begins with this thing on the right. Somewhere around July and August my Gran M gave me this wrap skirt/apron thing. And I thought it looked absolutely hideous. I tried it on once and I felt like I was being eaten alive by a weird skirt monster. Not only was it way too big, it was also too long and looked awkward on me. Let me tell you, four layers of this thing was anything but flattering. So I threw it into the "Nope, not wearing that" pile with the thought of using the fabric to create something that looked decent enough to wear. Which was kind of doubtful as I didn't like the colour either. I guess one can only hope. A little later I started to toss the idea of turning it into a reversible top.

So I kept that idea in the back of my mind and one day I found the Hawthorn dress pattern in my stash and I knew that this was it. So I traced the size 10 pieces for the blouse option and decided to omit the sleeves as I didn't have enough fabric for them. After that I cut out the pieces from the fabric and sewed them together. Then came the tricky part. Fitting. I knew this would be the part where I want to toss it all aside and never finish the blouse because it was all wrong. There bodice was too long for me and it made a huge mess around the shoulders. The shoulder line was too high and it was a hot mess. The other big issue was the shape of the bust dart. The shape was wrong and I needed to adjust them. So I lowered the shoulder line by 2,5cm from the neckline and 1,5cm from the armhole side. So not only was the shoulder too high for me, the angle was off as well. Blame my short torso and weird shoulders(I have the shoulders of a man, haha) I also took in the side seams by 1cm.

As you can see in the picture above, the original bust dart shape(grey) is really different from the one I ended up with(green). This right here is the reason why most RTW fitted tops and dresses don't fit me. The darts are wrong for me. 

So here's the final result. Right now the fit is a bit too snug. Damn you, holiday food! But I'm working on losing all of that extra padding so, it should fit me better again soon. On this side, I made the floral peplum layer a bit shorter(I ran out of fabric). This is a bit more modest side, I think with only a bit of floral pattern on the collar and peplum.

I used snap buttons instead of buttons. Mainly because buttons are tricky when you need them to function both way. And because I am lazy and find myself hating the process of getting dressed every time I have to close SOOOOOOOO many tiny buttons. Ain't nobody got time fo dat.

And this is the side that I think looks more loud. However as the color itself is kind of quiet and not all up in your face, it's still not really that loud. I love how the floral peplum still is seen through the solid layer. Plus it eliminates all possibilities of my tummy flashing itself. Which is another win in my eyes. On this side the snaps are little silver rings while on the other side they were white little dots(Almost like buttons). 

As you can see, I topstitched the collar and the front. I finished the hem with teeny-tiny baby rolled hem. To avoid any serged edges peeking through while wearing, I finished the peplum seams with flat felled seams. 

Also. The story is not over yet. Picture me in my sewing room, all giddy about finally finishing this thing and still unsure if I would ever wear it for real because of  my dislike of the color. I had just attached the peplum to the bodice(I had sandwiched the bodice between the peplum) and done the topstitching over that seam line. And here I was, trimming down the waist seam allowance so I could do the final topstitching on the front seam and then attach the snap buttons and then.......................

THIS happened. You know when everyone keeps telling you that you should be super careful when trimming seams. This is why. I had been reckless and I was staring at the result of that. I did not know what to do, to cry, yell, laugh or chuck the whole thing into the bin as it's clearly cursed. So I did what anyone would do. I Instagrammed it. And then took a lot of deep breaths and took my good friend seam ripper to rip up the waistline seams. Then I lowered the seamline on the bodice by as little as I could to hide that notch but still maintain the length I wanted. Everything after that is ancient history.

I have been trying to think what the real moral of this story is. And I can't say there is only one. There are three.

1. Don't hurry and pay attention to what you are doing, dum-dum

2.Use interfacing that is more similar to the main fabric when working with slightly sheer fabrics. I really should have used a purple/pink interfacing instead of white.

3. Never say never. I actually like this thing. I still dislike pink/purple/blue but I really like how this blouse looks on me. I might be actually crazy. Probably left the last bits of my sanity to the part where I nicked the fabric while trimming down the seam allowance.