The thing that trips me up about sewing is that it’s hard to fix mistakes. Knitting is easy. If you mess up, you can usually drop a stitch or two to fix it, or sneak a stitch in or out. At the worse, you have to rip back a few inches. Big deal, right? But in sewing–at least, for a novice–if you screw something up, a lot of times you’re stuck with it.
For example. I was stoked about this tutorial to make a little peasant blouse using just four pieces of fabric and some 1/4 inch elastic. My first mistake was not having any 1/4 inch elastic and blithely deciding I’d just cut up some 1 inch woven that I had. Woven! Have two decades of crafting taught me nothing? Woven = fray city.
My second mistake was cutting the bodice 2″ too wide. I have no idea how that happened, but it did. In a really lightweight fabric, that probably would have been fine, even cute with the extra volume, but I was using a medium-weight cotton without notable drape.
Well, I was bound and determined to make this shirt. Cut cut cut, sew sew sew, and I ended up with an adorable little garment. Looks cute, right?
Wrong!
Cute baby; seriously uncute neckline. There was just too much fabric billowing out in all the wrong places. Here’s another shot that’s a little less offensive but shows the back billow:
I’m not giving up. I think if I move the casing for the neck elastic away from the edge, like I did on the sleeves, the neck will be more flattering. If that’s not enough, I’ll add a few inches of shirring at the chest and back. There’s always hope (and next time).
