This has turned into one of those 'everything goes wrong' projects. But instead of running away and crying and chucking them in the bin, I have actually
fixed my mistakes, so I am feeling proud of myself, if still a little frustrated.
Having successfully made up the TATB Cleo dungaree dress in a lovely cerise needlecord with a liberty lawn facing
...I decided I wanted some dungaree shorts.
I found an amazing neon Liberty print needlecord from
Sewbox and used my trouser block to trace shorts onto the Cleo pattern (I measured where I wanted the crotch seam first, wearing my finished dress, but they're dungarees so it didn't need much fitting). I also redrafted the front to add cutaway pockets, which meant re-drafting the facing. Apparently this is where I made my first mistake. More on that later.
Interestingly, when my fabric arrived, I thought it was printed upside down, as the nap runs in the opposite direction to the print, but apparently corduroy is traditionally worn with the pile going up and it was just radical fashion designers in the 60s who started cutting it upside down. Every day is a school day.
I decided I needed to bind all the seams, so I measured them and drew out a 30cm square on my facing fabric to make a 3m+ continuous 2.5cm wide bias strip... and snipped straight through the middle of it. I'm still not entirely sure how or why this happened. I cut another one.
Sewing started off smoothly enough. I topstitched one inside leg seam pressed the wrong way and had to unpick, but that felt relatively minor. I also sewed the wrong end of the straps closed, so they have slanted edges at the front instead of perpendicular ones. Not really a problem. It was when I got to the side seams, feeling like I was on the home straight, that 'everything' collided.
1. I realised that my Cleo dress fits perfectly
if it goes on over my head. You can't do that with shorts. Fine. I had sewn the right side seam but I could use the left seam allowance to add a button placket. I wanted buttons that match the dungaree ones (which I had already put on, so no chance of a whole new set of matching ones) so ended up having to order two more sets of dungaree buckles to get them as I could only find black buttons separately. I repurposed the snipped bias tape square to cut a facing for the placket. I even found a scrap of interfacing the right size in the scraps bin!
2. One of my dungaree buckles seems to be faulty, as it will not 'click' shut to grip the fabric. I could solve this by turning the strap under and stitching (this is what the Cleo instructions say to do anyway, and what I did on my dress), but as I ordered the two extra sets for the buttons I have a working one on the way. Fine.
3. Somehow, I had removed a seam allowance I should not have from the back/cut out pocket facing. This was relatively simply solved by cutting away the top of the pocket. Except I had already bound it so had to unpick all the binding and resew that too. And then I had to do the other side to match, although this was not strictly necessary, due to re-doing the facing for this side anyway because of the new button placket.
4. I realised I needed about 1.5m more of binding. Not sure how I miscalculated that so badly. I think this was when I was closest to tears. Luckily I had enough facing fabric left to make more.
5. When matching up my makeshift button placket, it was about 0.75cm off at the top. I have no idea why. I unpicked the facing from the back and re-sewed it so that it matched the front. This meant unpicking topstitching and understitching as well. By now I just expected everything to need unpicking anyway.
6. My bobbin thread ran out. I looked at the spool and that was nearly empty too, so all that topstitching and unpicking and re-stitching has used two entire 100m spools of thread, which seems excessive some something with essentially five seams.
In the middle of all this I had tidied my seam ripper into not-its-usual-place and spent about 20 minutes wandering around the sewing room, holding the lid, until I eventually found it. I think this coincided with the almost crying.
So now I am waiting for more thread and my buttons to arrive, then I just need to do the buttonholes, apply the buttons and and bind and hem the raw edge. Until then these are joining my practice wedding dress in the 'almost finished, waiting for supplies' pile. I'll cut out something new this weekend.
The fabric is quite hard to photograph, but that is because the seams, pockets etc. all blend in quite nicely with the print. And the yellow is more neon than it looks in the picture!
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