What I learned in June

Well i didn’t finish the beginner’s contest, in fact I hardly started! I went away for a week with some friends, and I was knocked flat by two illnesses back to back. Normally when I’m sick, sewing cheers me up. But not this time, all I wanted to do was lay flat and feel sorry for myself. Thank goodness for sewing blogs!

But I actually learned a lot in June.
 

• I made a muslin for Butterick 3384 after doing a FBA.
  I probably wont continue with this top for a while yet, winter has suddenly announced its arrival here, and suddenly floaty tops aren’t very interersting!
• I acquired a new and healthy respect for grainline, and started adjusting my muslins on my dress form rather than flat. Sewing used to be all about matching edges and then sewing an even distance from that edge. Now, all of a sudden, it’s about the grain of the fabric, and where I need to place a seam on each individual pattern piece to get the best effect.
• I got to know my dress form a lot better, and in the process came to some hard realisations about my own figure. (gulp!)
• On a whim I draped a piece of knit fabric on my dress form and ended up making a flat pattern and a muslin from it. The muslin looks quite promising for a first go.
• Tried thread tracing and tailors tacks on my self-drafted muslin, which made a lot of sense to me and took a lot of the guesswork out of things. I will definitely be doing this more in the future (although probably not on muslins! I need to find a texta that does the job for me)

In store for me in July… I’m finally going to have a go at a BWOF pattern. A pair of pants no less. Wish me luck!