I’m back! I know it’s been a bit, and it’s because of my practice teaching term/the end of the academic term. On top of my own teaching job, I’m in the midst of five weeks of practice teaching doing high school band and strings combined with a production of Jesus Christ Superstar (I’ll be helping out with costumes on that later today). Needless to say, I’ve had less time to sew. But I did finish my Closet Case Jasika Blazer a week or so ago! I haven’t shared it here yet because I’m hoping to make a matching pair of Jenny shorts to go with it. But in between the blazer and the future shorts, I made the dress below! I finished it yesterday and I’m VERY happy with it, but it was a huuuuuuge struggle (even though I’ve made the pattern before). Before I tell you of my woes, here are the basic details: it’s a size 38 view A of the Deer & Doe Myosotis dress, in a beauuuuutiful double gauze made by Atelier Brunette that I bought at Patch. And it’s so swishy and fun and I’m in love!
Full disclosure: this dress produced a previously unseen level of rage when sewing it. The first hint at what was to come was earlier in the week when I sewed one of the ruffles onto the sleeve right side to wrong side, and then serged the seam allowance, pulled out all the gathering stitches before realizing my mistake. I fixed it a few hours later that day because I knew if I didn’t, the looming “fixing” would hang over my head and make me not want to return to the dress.
I think a lot of the problems after that point stemmed from three main factors. The only matching thread I had in my supply was a 100% cotton thread that was intended for quilting, but I used it anyway. I wanted to be nice to my double gauze so I used a size 60 microtex needle in my sewing machine. And then for reasons unknown, my serger was having a hissy fit basically all day yesterday. So the thread + needle combination made it INSANELY hard to thread and the thread kept pulling out of the needle between seams so I had to rethread my machine probably 30+ times. At difficulty level 1000 because of the thread and the tiny needle hole. I also rethreaded my serger around 20 times because it decided it hated me and kept breaking threads and unthreading itself (super helpful). Because the thread wasn’t polyester, it was more delicate and my gathering stitches kept breaking. I had to resew gathering stitches probably 7-10 times, unpicking the old ones in the process each time (which is a veeeery long length). I switched to polyester thread for the gathers after the first breakage, but the continuing strife was because the lovely little gold spots and my sewing machine didn’t get along and my machine kept getting stalled on top of them and sewing multiple stitches, which wouldn’t normally matter except for the whole wanting to have long stitches to gather the thing. THEN when I thought I was in the clear and only had the hem left, I realized I sewed a giant fold at the side seam of the bodice when I attached the skirt. OF COURSE I had already serged the whole seam and pulled out the gathering stitches. So I pulled all that out and redid that part of the seam. And hemmed. And was FINALLY DONE. Hours and hours after I normally would’ve been done. Which I had planned to have dinner after I finished the thing, and then was in such a rage at the project that I wouldn’t let it go because I wanted it to be done so then I didn’t eat from 11am until 10pm. Good life decisions.
But I really do love it! I’m glad I stuck with it and fixed all the issues as they happened because I really would’ve left it for ages if I had set it aside with problems before going to bed. And now I can wear it today! It goes super well with my Deer & Doe Luzerne trench coat, which coincidentally now fits perfectly because of my newly giant shoulders which make loads of my other me-made clothes not fit properly. I haven’t shared that on the blog because I made it before I had the blog, but I think I will soon because I love it and am super proud of it!
Speaking of the blog, I actually had my one year blog-anniversary on April 11! I didn’t manage to post anything on the day of because of the aforementioned reasons of busy-ness, but I’ll talk about it a bit now! For a long time I didn’t start a blog because I was worried it would make me feel less casual about sewing and turn it into “work” instead of for fun, but I’ve so far managed to keep a good balance with that! And I love sharing a lot more detail about my projects in a forum where I can curate it and show lots of pictures alongside my text. As well, I like having a place where I can show travel photos and other adventures for people to see all in one place! And I love having all of you readers to interact with in a new way! Thanks for being here! Thanks for reading and commenting! I’m really glad I started the blog – here’s to the next year!
Back to this dress. I think my residual feelings of rage will subside the longer I have between me and last night, especially because the dress is so lovely! I love how the fabric feels (I pre-washed AND dried it in the dryer *gasp*), it’s insanely soft, and I think it goes really well with this pattern. I have a little less than 2m of some Atelier Brunette rayon as well that I’m hoping to squeeze a Peppermint peplum top out of and an Ogden cami. My next project is going to be WHATEVER I FEEL LIKE because I deserve to not follow a plan or a queue after my experiences of last night. Stay tuned to see where my whims take me!
