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Totally discouraged…

I’ve been hard at work on my slow-moving self-drafted shirtdress, creating bound buttonholes for the spaces the collar passes through before tying, making french seams everywhere, double checking all the darts so they all line up, and finally I tried it on last night to check the hem and button placement.

And it’s horrible. Dumpy, unflattering, and just bad.

All I could think of was Trena’s “prison matron” dress, and like hers, mine’s got pockets, but that’s about it. I don’t even know if I can bring myself to finish it, but it’s sitting on my dressform for a while so I can mull over whether any of it is even salvageable. I just know there’s no way in hell I’m ripping out a million french seams! It’s got nothing to do with the Pattern Magic directions, as the collar is okay, it’s all down to the fit of the rest of the dress…

And the shirting is Prada, too! *whinge* And I made three muslins! *whinge* I did everything right, and the dress is just so very wrong. Which mostly discourages me from pattern drafting altogether. I mean, what’s the point in pattern drafting if the fit is worse than what I get straight off a pattern sheet? Because, really, Burda, Knip, and even Manequim fit me straight off the sheet, no alterations needed. Do I really need the extra hassle in my life to end up with a sub-par result even with all my designer finishing techniques? Am I happy to never be a pattern designer? These are the sort of questions I’m asking myself right now anyway.

The Pattern Magic 2 course at Morley College

This weekend was my eagerly-awaited “Creative Pattern Cutting 2” course at Morley College in London, which was a two day class based entirely on the second “Pattern Magic” book. I’ve owned the Pattern Magic books for a while, but I’ve only tried one design (with discouraging results), so I was really excited to have the opportunity to explore them further.

I’d have no idea this course was even offered if it wasn’t for Tracy blogging about attending the course on the first book, either. So a big THANK YOU to her for bringing it to wider attention!

And seriously, this course was FANTASTIC! The tutor, Moni, was simply amazing, I can’t say enough good things about her – she does a lot of other Fashion/Sewing courses at Morley and I’d sign up for one of her other classes in a heartbeat (and I see she’s doing one on the Colette Wolf book “The Art Manipulating Fabric” soon, too, which sounds very cool)!

The facilities at Morley were great, too – lots of room to spread out, domestic Berninas and ironing stations, plenty of cross paper and cheap calico/muslin, and it was super easy for me to get to, and easy walking distance from Waterloo Station and surrounded by great pubs for lunch, too. It really was jawdropping that the whole weekend course only cost £48, especially when you consider most sewing courses in London are a) on the same old three dull topics over and over again and b) usually in the range of £300-400!

Believe it or not, this was also my first “formal” training ever in sewing!

We ended up with only eight students in the class so we all got a lot of individual help, which was great. I never really felt like there was any point where I was struggling and I couldn’t ask the tutor – she really did a fantastic job at spreading her time evenly amongst us. We also got to choose which projects we wanted to work on, which was ideal because it meant there wasn’t the usual classroom thing where some people were too fast and others too slow, etc. All the students there was really sharp with their sewing and drafting so I think everyone got a lot out of the class, too.

KnipMode August 2011

As a subscriber, my KnipMode issues usually arrive in the first week of the month, like clockwork. But this month, I’d heard rumours that the August issue was delayed because of a printing error, so it wouldn’t be on Dutch news-stands until 15 July, meaning I probably wouldn’t get mine until a few days later. In hindsight, a few days here nor there really wasn’t going to improve this issue, as it’s a pretty mediocre one in my opinion. Lillian mentioned there’s a new woman in charge at Knipmode, so I certainly hope this is just a one-off boring issue instead of a worrying trend…

This issue starts off with a few lively Plus patterns, the star of which are these awesome jeans! They’ve got some great seaming on the leg, and the pocket edge is bias-bound, which I think is a nice feature, too.

I know Manequim do “celebrity” fashion a lot with their Brazilian soap stars, but it’s not really anything I go for in a magazine. If it’s a good pattern, it could be on a mannequin for all I care, and well, if it’s a bad pattern, putting it on a tango-orange glamour model isn’t going to make it any better. This was the best dress of the footballer’s wives collection of Z-list Dutch “celebrity” dresses…