My Latest Sewing Project

I belong to some quilting groups online, and I'm always inspired by what I see.  I want to start working on a quilt, but I have to first finish my current project because it is taking up every square inch of my work space in my sewing room.  I have a certain style of tops I like to wear.  I love flowing tunic tops that drop down below crotch level.  Very few people make jeans nowadays with a high enough waist to cover up underpants, so I try to cover my underpants with long tops.  I also like to cover my butt while I'm at it.

Very few places carry tunic tops anymore, or if they do, they are way too short or way too tight to be called tunic tops.  I don't need stretchy fabric clinging to my middle-aged tummy pouch.  So, I decided one day to just start sewing my own tops since I knew what I wanted.  The problem is that whenever I try to make garments from scratch, the dimensions are way off and the final result is unwearable.  You almost need an engineering degree to design clothing patterns.  I hate having to cut up clothing projects I spent months or years working on only to have no choice but to use the scraps for something else.  Fabric isn't cheap.

So, I needed a professional pattern to work off.  Of course, there were no patterns that fit what I wanted to make, so I had to find something that was close, and then alter it to fit my criteria.  I stupidly thought it was as simple as making the skirt part of the top longer and wider, but then found out that meant I also had to lengthen the lining.  Ugh.  I totally forgot to do that, so I had to tack on little squares of fabric, which looks awful.  I didn't know if I'd have enough fabric to make new lining from scratch and I wasn't willing to order more because I could see that this project was going to wind up being another failure no matter what I did.  I was now in damage control mode.

The pattern I bought had several errors in the instructions and I was struggling to understand what they really meant to write.  I'd read the instructions over and over and stared at the diagrams, but I couldn't make heads or tails of any of it.  I finally decided to just use common sense.

I started making good progress today when I realized that this was too easy.  Something had to be wrong.  Something was always wrong when it came to sewing.  I looked closer at my work and saw that the bobbin thread had run out four pin removals ago.  Argh!  I had to re-pin the seam and re-thread the machine after fixing the bobbin issue.

I went back to work and finished that step.  The next step of the instructions made no sense to me.  I did what they showed in the picture, and then realized that I was supposed to serge the raw edge of the lining before tacking it down.  I didn't want to rip out the seams of the tacking because I had already had to rip out the seams of one shoulder to get it to line up, so I just serged around the tacking.

I was feeling proud of myself for pushing on despite the setbacks, when I stood up and looked down to see that I had accidentally stepped on the tie to the top and ripped it off the garment.  One step forward -- two steps back. 

"Oh well, I can sew it back on really quick," I told myself.

Nope!  Somehow in that one inch of fabric I needed to sew, the thread got bunched up under the foot and my garment got jammed in the machine.  When it rains -- it pours.  I know when to quit.  Time for some oatmeal cookies.