Anxiously Waiting

Waiting for Ruby to arrive. I have my fiberfill ready and I have some poly batting. All I need is her and the cover. The cover is coming from England. Did you know Adjustoform makes the Dritz forms? I realized that last night when I was in Joann's and trying to get a sense of how much padding the form would need. I walked away clueless about the padding, but I noticed that the box said "Made in England." Who knew?

In anticipation of her arrival, I've been doing some research on slopers. I'm going to go with the Perfect Fit from McCall's. I've been really studying my Palmer/Pletsch books:

Of course as I read, I'm sooo confident I can do whatever technique I'm reading about. Then comes reality when the pattern is in front of me. I know a dress form won't magically increase my sewing skills, but I'd like to think I could at least start getting the measurements right.

I've reprioritized my sewing projects. I have to have stuff I can wear to work now. In no particular order are:

• Vogue 8623 (jacket)
• Vogue 8605 (skirt)
• Kwik Sew 3338
• Kwik Sew 3740

Burda 8087 or Kwik Sew 3385. What I've discovered is the muslin I was going to use for KS3338 could be the fabric for KS3740. Hmmmmm. Is the only way to check for fit on a knit garment is to use another knit? Please say no.

Lastly, I've added what I hope will be the last two books I'll need to add to my library for a while. I got a highly-recommeded general sewing book by Reader's Digest. Folks can't stop raving about it.

I think this will be my last book on pattern alteration, The Perfect Fit.

Thank You eBay!!!

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! I am now the proud owner of a Dritz My Double Deluxe dress form! And a cover! Now, this sacrifice means I may be eating roasted chicken and canned goods for Thanksgiving, but I think it's worth it ;-)


I'm so excited! I know Ruby won't be perfect (I've already named her), but I can give her the bumps and curves she needs to be Mini Me. Well ... she won't be mini. I saw where someone else named her form Semi Me, now I get it.

For instance, she'll need about 4" more on the hips. And tons more junk in her trunk, but I'm not worried. I had to purchase an adjustable dress form because I have 30 pounds to lose and I can't buy a new form for every 10 pounds.

I had a three-part plan to get an accurate representation of me -- dress form, cover and padding. For the cover and padding, I thought about the Fabulous Fit Fitting System. At $137, I'm having second thoughts. I was able to find a cover on eBay too. If I pick up some batting, I may be able to get the same effect. I found a great tutorial on Pattern Review.

Hopefully My form will be completed by the end of next week. Then, I can spend the Thanksgiving week sewing stuff that fits!

A Little Progress

I've been busy today. I've been trying to figure out how to do an FBA on a top without a dart. Is anything simple when sewing? I'm not frustrated because of the work; I hate I ran out of time. Had to work for an hour and then spent a couple of hours in the kitchen. Dinner was tasty.


Anyhoo. I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, but I'm proud of the attempt. Let's see first, I dug through the trash and found the large and extra large cutting lines. Score for Kwik Sew. Real paper made reattachment easy.

Humpty Dumpty is all put back together again.

Now, once I taped everything back up I brief agonized, and I do mean agonized over how to get from a medium to an extra large. Here's what I'm most proud of, I decided to tissue fit the pattern. Not only that, I traced the pattern onto sewable pattern paper. This may not sound like much to you, but this is big stuff for a girl who was baffled by understitching a few months ago.

I got lazy with some of the markings. Who needs the cutting lines for medium, large and extra large anyway?

I'm sure this will come back to haunt me, but I couldn't tape the pieces together smoothly. Here are the pins.

Let's see if I can draw the cutting line. I pined the 1/4" seam allowance.

Shoulder too.

Now comes the FBA. Here's a random line. Well, not really random, but kind of because I had to make up where I thought the dart should go. Of course there was no apex on the pattern. I made that up too.

Now from that line to this, I'm not really sure what happened. The one thing I do know is that I'm prioritizing a dress form over car repair. I just have no idea what I'm doing when I try to fit myself.

The above looks like the book, Fit For Real People, but I'm completely guessing with the measurements. I really did try to add an apex to the pattern and measure center front to center front, but it was all too much. When I sliced the pattern, I just pinned some random distance. I'll figure it out next weekend.