I've spent most of this afternoon cutting out, my least favourite part of the sewing process. No wait. I hate cutting out. I appreciate its importance, but it's pants. Whizzing away with the machine joining bits together is far more fun. Perhaps that's why I'm not, and never will be, a proper sewist (or whatever we are meant to call ourselves, we hobby dressmakers).
For this reason I decided to have a big session with the scissors and give myself three garments to make up. The first is another Jazzy Jacquard dress from the 5/2016 Ottobre mag. My first version worked out well and even drew compliments, despite being a bit of a hash. It's a comfortable, useful dress so I'm having another go (hoping to match the side seams this time) using a navy blue Ikat printed polyester jersey. This fabric has a lot more stretch than the previous version, which was a jacquard 'crazy paving' design.
The second was from the same Ottobre issue, the Vignette shirt. I'm using a Minerva cotton print, a light green with a large off-white daisy print and a bit of texture to it. It's nice and drapey, I like it.
Third, still in my quest for the perfect shirt pattern, Butterick 5526, in a cotton lawn, a Liberty look-a-likey. It might actually be Liberty, but I discovered the print was just ever so slightly off the grainline, so possibly a second. Nice autumnal colours though.
There is a theme here. All of these blasted fabrics needed to be matched. So single thickness cutting, grainline slightly off for the lawn, lots of muttering and cursing! Also I first had to adjust the shirt patterns for an FBA. The Ottobre pattern had already had the treatment. It all took ages and I came very close to cutting two left fronts for the Butterick (nearly forgot to flip) which would have been a disaster as fabric was tight.
On the plus side, I have plenty of sewing ahead of me with no nasty cutting out for a while. A valuable lesson has been learned. Only self-coloured fabrics for me for the next few projects!
I have a horrible premonition that, despite all my care, the pattern matches will end up out by enough to show that I tried to get it right, but failed. This will look worse than if I hadn't made the attempt!
Onward and upward, I learn a bit more with each garment.