Sewing My Me Made Wardrobe: Week 4

Remember this boring too big sweater? 

Now it's not boring or too big!  

I must confess that out of all of my MMM '12 sewing projects this was the biggest pain in the rear to sew.  All I had to do was turn the damn thing into a 3/4 length sleeved, v-neck cardi.  That can't be hard right? Well, I was wrong.  

It wasn't so much hard as infuriating.  First off some of this is on me (probably all of it).   The biggest thing being the fact that this sweater is striped and I insisted that the stripes match up at the button band and that when I shorten the sleeves everything lined up.  Lesson learned; knitting stripes is relative easy, sewing things with stripes is not. 

My second gripe was the button holes.  Again this is my own damn fault.  Lets use the smallest shank buttons ever and place one every inch.  While we're at it lets do this all on a knit that gets caught in the feed dogs of your machine.  Lesson learned; when sewing button holes in a knit that is fuzzy, face the back of the button band in something smooth that won't catch.  

Finally, damn was this sweater stretchy!  I figured it would be, you know being knit from wool and all.  But this sweater was stretched out to begin with and then add the pull of the machine and well it resulted in a lot of seam ripping.  This was especially true when it came to taking in the sleeves.  Lesson learned; zig zag is a life saver. 

All in all I am pleased  with how the sweater came out in the end, but you won't see me altering many more sweaters.  I'll stick to knitting them.  

Once that project was done I had one more thing on my sewing list, a dress sewn with some lovely batik fabric that I found at a hidden away fabric store in center city.  Here's the fabric:

And here's a close up of one of the motifs:

Teal and brown are one of my favorite color combinations.  I originally was going to make another Anda, but after spending time with this fabric I realized that it wanted to be made into a dress that had more structure.  Instead of the Anda I made this:

It was so much fun to play with the pattern placement on the print to come up with an interesting use of the motifs.  The dress is a simple gathered skirt attached to the bodice of the Danielle from Burda Style.  The Danielle has a great neckline that shows of your collar bones and a little bit of the girls with out being over the top.  I think I want to make 6 more versions of this dress so I have one for every day of the week.  

And with this I have completed my sewing for Me Made May '12.  Wow, I'm finished and still have a few days left.  Maybe I could squeeze in one more project.