Last Wednesday I cut out all the pieces for my wearable peony muslin and sewed them up. The bust darts on one side were lower than the other (I have no clue how that happened) and the back was still too big. So, Wednesday night, I ripped the whole thing apart.
Flash forward to Saturday. I resewed the darts, lowered the neckline, and increased the back darts. Success! It started to resemble a well-fitting garment. I felt so empowered. I stayed up late working on it and finished sewing and attaching the skirt to the bodice.
Sunday was finishing day. I tackled the invisible zipper problem-free, then decided to finish the neckline with bias tape. This is where things went wrong.
Since this was a muslin, I just used some stiff, cheap quilting cotton I got at walmart like 2 years ago. I didn’t have enough to do sleeves, pockets or facings, just the main dress pieces, so I figured bias tape would suffice.
When I lowered the neckline 2 inches, it took on a squarish shape vs the bandeau it’s designed to be. After sewing in the bias tape, the neckline didn’t lay flat. It kind of curled outward. Overall, it was looking good and by this point I was feeling super empowered. I clipped the corners of the neckline a little, but my husband recommend I clip them more.
I went outside and started clipping. Then, I looked down….I had clipped through the fabric on the bodice!!!! NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!! Somehow it had folded up under the seam allowance or (more than likely), I wasn’t paying attention.
I don’t have any pictures of the hole I made because I sprung into problem solving mode. I could get an iron on patch, but that would make the neckline too stiff. Colette Patterns sends out weekly sewing tips called Snippets (They’re a pretty interesting and quick read, so go subscribe). A few weeks ago, they recommended using the decorative stitches available on your sewing machine to finish garments.
Ah Ha! This is what I would do. I would embroider right over the hole and now one would ever know it was there. Not so fast, Sarah. Things don’t work that way.
My terrible embroidery attempt and neckline which curled outward
I purposely picked a thick diamond shape in hopes it’d be wide enough to cover the hole. The needle landed in the hole I’d cut and completely distorted the shape of the diamond. UGH!!
See the fourth diamond from the left side? It hit the hole and went all side goggly
Not only that, but overall, the decorative stitching looks like shit. Seriously. I don’t know if it’s a tension issue, something with me pulling the fabric (I contentiously tried not to pull), sewing around the curves, but my diamonds are different widths. And I ran out of bobbin 3/4 of the way across the neck.
Diamonds get smaller as you go from left to right
I showed the half finished faux embroidery to my husband and I knew further salvage attempts were futile. He wouldn’t give me an opinion. No opinion = bad opinion. Finally he said “I guess it looks okay.” So I said, “What does that mean?” He said, “If it were me, I’d just redo it.” Crash and Burn.
This is how the dress has been sitting since I gave up (until I hung it up to take these pictures). See that orb? Maybe that means I have a ghost in my sewing room 🙂 When I retook the picture it was gone….oooooooooooooohhhh
My pile of failure (and maybe a ghost)
I’ve accepted my fail. Despite my disappointment, the dress did have a few problems:
- There was still a little bit too much room at the upper neckline.
- Small gap in the front neckline too, which didn’t help the fact that the neckline wanted to curl out anyways.
- Even though a resewed those stupid darts like 4 times, they still managed to not be perfect. One side was slightly longer than the other. When I went to resew them the last time, my marking pencil had completely rubbed off the fabric, so I had to lay the pattern on top and re-mark the darts. I messed up. One of the waist darts was pretty much centered with the waist gathers. The other one was at the left hand side of the gathers. I don’t know if you can see, or if that makes sense. The point is, they weren’t even on the left and right sides. See?
Hard to see, but darts don’t match gathers
Overall, it’s probably good that I made it unwearable; otherwise, I would have worn it, even with all it’s other problems (I just felt so dang fufilled). I thought about trying to make it v-neck, but with the dart problems, it’s probably better to let it be.
Next time I make it, I will:
- try to adjust the back some more
- take some fabric out of the front neckline
- still lower the neckline because as-is, it goes up onto my throat, but maybe only 1 inch
- be extra careful about accurately tracing the darts onto the fabric before any sewing occurs
Chris (husband) is out of town and I don’t have a camera remote or feel like doing the selfsie, so I don’t have any pictures of me wearing the dress. I was going to hang it on the hook on the back of the door so I could get a whole dress shot, but I don’t want to disturb Ms. Sadie Mae 🙂
“Let sleeping dogs lie”
Sarah Sews 