Christie's Skirt and Blouse pt 2

I did get to Joann Fabrics.  Because of the end of 2014 season the place was a MESS.  They were out of a lot of the fabric I had in mind for this project.  And there were bolts all over, including the floor.  It was very difficult to find anything.  I did decide on polyester shantung for the skirt because I couldn't find anything else.  I usually would choose a cotton blend or something at least better than full polyester.   But anyway. . . .  I chose black, because I couldn't find anything else.  Do I sound frustrated, I was.

So leaving that behind..... I washed the fabric.  It took me ages to surrender to washing the fabric before I make the garment.  In lots of fabric, sizing makes it look so nice compared to when it is washed out.  And then, after washing you have to do the ironing to get it to look nice again.  And, honestly, the biggest reason I would skip the washing was because I just wanted to dive into the project and not wait!  But on the other hand, I have had costumes shrink in strange ways because I didn't wash them first.  I finally learned.

Now I wash the fabric or dry clean if fabric instruction indicate , and when I store it I attach a post-it with all the info on the fabric including that it has been washed.

If I hadn't used the pattern before I make a mock up from usually a fabric from my stash that will also work as a lining.  It took me a long time to learn this lesson also.  The fact that I can use it as a lining helped me get to the stage of making a mock up.  On this project I am skipping the mock up....listen to what I say, not what I do!!   I have done this pattern several times so I know how it works and how the sizes are.

So, the "Fashion" (the fabric on the outside of the garment)  fabric is laid out, usually folded lengthwise, with the pattern on top, with the grain so you will have 2 pieces of each pattern piece or 1 if you are cutting "on the fold".   Once in a while you will hit a pattern piece so large that you need to cut on a single layer.

Of course, Missey has to make sure I am doing it right!

mmmx






The fabric is cut out using a rotary cutter.  the arrows on the cutting line are clipped in from the line about 1/8 of an inch to mark where you will match seams.

Darts are marked with tailor chalk on the wrong (or inside) side of the fabric, or tailor tacks (or my shortcut method of just pins).  Mark both layers of the fabric.



















By the way, the fashion side of this fabric is duller and has the raised shantung thread lines.
















Can you see the 3 dart dots?
















The two dots near the fabric edge are brought together and matched like below
















 The fabric is folded (wrong side of the fabric is to the outside) to the point of the 3rd dot.  Then, the line between the top dots and 3rd dot is sewn along to create the dart.
















2 darts prior to ironing.

 The next step is to French seams on the side seams.