Category: underpants

dress, finished, monday, pyjamas, sewing, underpants, underwear

Monday Musings… recent makes: a disappointing dress, and a nice nightie!

christinahopgood
The first thing I’m about to show you was a massive fail, in my opinion… please don’t judge! Scroll down for the WIN!
You all know how much I love the Luck Be A Lady dresses on Modcloth… I own far too many and they’re all amazing and I wear them almost every day.  So I wanted to make my own.  I spent ages finding a pattern and finally got one!
This is (supposed to be) New Look 6184. Here’s the pattern envelope: 
Looks like a simple dress.  It has the key feature, which is neckline pleats.  It probably is, if you use the right fabric!  You can either make it a pencil skirt or a full flared skirt.  I wanted to make a circle skirt, which was SO DUMB, why didn’t I just follow the pattern srsly.

 
My fabric… I don’t even know?  It said it was “suiting”.  This fabric has a tartan pattern on it, which is supposed to be STRAIGHT, as it is woven and not printed.  I could not get this sucker to lie straight no matter what I did!  The pattern just warped every which way.  So cutting was the first problem.

My second problem was that the iron-on interfacing wouldn’t adhere to this fabric.  As such my neck underlining keeps popping up to say hello (I managed to keep it down for the photos).

 This is the bit I’m happy with – it’s the first time I’ve used bias binding for underarms.  Even this didn’t quite work out, because the fabric also frayed like crazy making it hard to enclose the raw edge.
So I tried making a half-circle skirt instead of using the pattern pieces for the full skirt, which ended up being the dumbest thing ever.  I was trying to match up plaid and it wasn’t having it.

 Hooooly crap my darts were bad, the fabric was just SO NAUGHTY.
Aaaaaand then I cut the skirt too short while hemming.  Now it’s JUST A BIT too short to be comfortable with, and also it’s see through which I didn’t notice when I bought the fabric.

This is the most I’ve ever stuffed up anything.  I got pretty down about this, especially since I’m doing garment production at CIT and I should be good at this by now. I guess in class we only ever used calico which is extremely well-behaved, and we’ve never actually made a dress.  Nevertheless I’m pretty upset since I had such high hopes for the pattern.  Should I try again?  I think the pattern is probably fine, I just royally stuffed up!

Ok the next thing worked out very well, thank you!

The next thing I made was a nightie, because recently I’ve been wearing a really daggy singlet and shorts to bed, very unattractive.  This is the same pattern I made my undies from recently.

I made a hybrid of both petticoats, the top from view B but the body from view A.  (the difference is that view is less full, and I wanted as few seams as possible).

 This blue stretch satin monstrosity is only my toile, so don’t panic!  The satin was not stretchy enough and I didn’t have the correct type of lace, so it didn’t work out.  I learnt a lot from my toile and my actual garment turned out wonderfully:

 No you can not see me in my nightie.  This top falls to just below my bottom, so I think it will be good for summer coming up!  But recently it’s been cold so I’ve worn it with pyjama pants.

I’m so happy with how the lace turned out.  You have to stretch at the underarms and at the middle front so it doesn’t sag.

 My fabric is a lovely soft poly/cotton knit (I don’t actually fully know what’s in it, but I did the burn test and it is flammable, yaaay flammable pyjamas).  It’s got a pretty sparkle through it!

 The back is just one seam down the middle, and I find it doesn’t bother me in bed at all.
 Knitwit patterns are SO EASY!  I don’t have a stretch machine but my domestic sewing machine is working fine.  I just stretch as I sew, as it says in the instructions, so that the finished seam is still stretchy.

I still have a bunch left, so I’m going to make some more undies!  All the undies I’ve been making for myself are so much more comfortable than store-bought ones, it’s insane.  I just want to wear them all the time but I only have 2 good pairs (and one fail).  Or I could make the opposite nightie, view A bodice with view B body…
Have you ever sewn a KnitWit pattern?  So good!