Postcards from the Island of Muslins

It was super exciting when I managed to finally finish the muslining/underlining/fitting/french seaming adventure that was the floral shirt. I celebrated bursting out of my self-imposed prison with a couple of speedy makes, including the beaded shirt (yes, in comparison, that was speedy), a long-sleeved shirt for Frances out of the same fabric, and some fleecey pajamas for Frances which she had been bugging me for for weeks. Both together–shirt and pajamas–took a day. And she likes both of them and wears them regularly. This is the pinnacle of mom-sewing–making things you do not need to force your children to wear.

However, I’ve made progress on the muslins:

The leather skirt.

I sewed up a test garment in old cotton/poly twill to test for fit, basted in bright yellow thread to make the seamlines extra visible. It’s a size 16, and it’s loose. Only a bit at the hips, but quite a bit at the waist, and the waist isn’t even at my waist. So for the next muslin, I’ll cut a size 14/16 at the hips and grade to a 12 at the waist, and raise the waist/hip line by about 1.5″.

I really like all of the seamlines. It’s an interesting skirt to put together.

I got some super shiny copper faux-leather to sew the second muslin out of. It doesn’t fray, so I can experiment with some of the leather finishing techniques and practice on something less high-stakes. Should be fun.

Oh, and I got the faux leather half-price. It’s pricier than the cotton-poly twill, to be sure, but still not expensive and hopefully I’ll get something wearable out of this one.

The Suit: Pants.

I started with a muslin in bright purpley indigo poly-wool twill (not a heavy twill; a suiting weight) of Style Arc’s Willow Pants.

They were much, much too tight.

Not the pattern’s fault. Apparently my hips are two inches bigger than I thought they were when I bought the pattern. Oops!

So I added some ease to the hips. And as with the skirt, I raised the waist by 1.5″. This may necessitate nipping it in a bit as well; I’ll have to measure and see.

I also added the pockets from the Jasmine pants to these (the Willow pants do not have pockets in their natural state), which worked out pretty well and I’ll do that again.

Otherwise, this was another successful Style Arc pattern for me. One of their differences from other pattern manufacturers is that all of the notches, match points, dart marks, etc., are done as clips in the seam allowance. There’s very little to transfer to the fabric in terms of markings afterwards. And all of the marks lined up well; it came together quite easily. I just can’t sit down in the muslin and breathe at the same time.

Fortunately I had enough of the fabric left–even after cutting out and sewing a Blazer!–that I could make another pair of pants slightly bigger. And I did. I’ll do a separate post about them later.

The Suit: Blazer!

This needs its own post. Making this muslin was a three-day undertaking, and even though it’s “just a muslin” there’s too much to pack it into a postcard. So more soon. I used Style Arc’s Sara jacket pattern and two watchings of Craftsy’s Modern Jacket Techniques class, copious pots of Dorian Grey tea, many many chocolate coated cookies, two spools of thread, and approximately half of my monthly wireless download allowance. But it ended up in this:

with welt pockets! An ease pleat! A jump hem! Sleeve vents!

And that’s all right.