SUMMER WARDROBE UPDATE
Finally, another garment! This time, it's the shell from the Putting It Together pattern. I was happy to discover that I had enough fabric left over from the original shirt to make a matching shell, stretching this little wardrobe even further.
As a reminder, here's the original shirt from The Blouse Perfected pattern. I wrote about it in an earlier blog, along with the original pair of One-Seam Pants.
With the leftover fabric, I made this shell.
You can just glimpse the "cheater strips" I added at the shoulders. I had a problem--not enough fabric to match the stripes over the shoulders. So I used a simple fix. First, I stitched the shoulder seams wrong sides together, so the seam allowances were on the outside of the garment. I trimmed them to 1/4" and pressed them open. Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph that till I already had moved ahead several steps, but this photo will show you anyway.
I cut two strips of fabric with the plum and white stripes at the center. I folded the raw edges under, pressed, and trimmed. Then I used Steam-a-Seam to fuse those strips over the shoulder seam allowances on the right side of the garment. Finally, I edgestitched the strips. Here's how that looked.
I'll mention a couple of other construction items. Once I stitched the facings to the garment, I graded and clipped the seam allowances. Finally, I pressed those seam allowances open. That makes it easy to turn the facings to the inside accurately.
Oh, right--you may be wondering why the facings are a different fabric. Again, stripes on the facings wouldn't match the garment's stripes, and I was afraid the mismatch would show through to the right side. So I chose a solid fabric that harmonized and cut the facings from that.
As you may know, we draft all the miters included in our patterns, so you don't have to figure them out. However, some of the uneven miters can look a little funny.
In this case, both the side vent and the hem edges are serged, and those edges are what must be matched--but they will be matched at a point 3/8" from the raw miter edges. That's because the miters are stitched using a 3/8" seam allowance. There's also a dot at the bottom corner of the miter, 3/8" in from the raw edges. Take a look--the photo is easier to understand.
I also wanted to show you how I measured, then stabpinned the hem in place before pressing it. It assures a straight, accurate hem. It's also helpful to have glass-head pins that won't melt from the iron's heat.
Of course, that original shirt can slide over the new shell, giving me a 4th outfit from the 4 garments I've made so far.
I hope I've given you a couple of ideas for your own summer wardrobe!
