tucks are awesome - m8581

didn't do anything omgsuperfun this weekend even though the weather was incredible. summer arts festival kick started in the old market. only drove by it and entire streets were blocked off, signalling parking frenzies for months to come.

finished my nautical striped dress (m8581) on saturday. it is SO LOUD. and the dress alone looks like a bedsheet upcycle. i wore it with neutral colored cardigan and flats to run errands. felt less self-conscious about the bedsheet aspect of it.

here's a pic of the pattern. how much do you love the hair! hahahaha:

here's a pic of the dress in its unabashed state:

the tucks definitely prevent the dress from looking like just another shapeless dress. the belt helps too!

it's a mishmash of 70s (looking) fabric + 80s boxy-ness. the front and back look exactly the same, so i often have no idea if i'm wearing it correctly. also, posing is hard. how do i get my arms to look less....flabby without actually working out?

here's a breakdown of the cost of this project:

pattern: $0.10
fabric: $3.00 ($1/yd x 3 yds)
thread: $2.00
grand total: $5.10

new project - McCall's 8581

working on a eightiestastic new dress with tucks!

this dress requires 3 yards of material (44") which was kind of meh because the dkny dress barely used 2. this dress is wider and longer - it has 3 x 1" tucks which is really 2 inches per tuck so that's... 6 inches of decorative material. still, it looked super long. not sure how much i can shorten the hem without having to move up the bottom tucks (there are two). it might have to resort to the latter. 

anyhow, as you may or may not know, cutting fabric is my least favorite part of sewing. I ABSOLUTELY HATE(d) it! yesterday i thought i'd go a different route and went to ace hardware and got a box of its biggest and heaviest washers. i had read on different blogs that using washers as pattern weights are much easier & faster than pinning down patterns. yes i hate pinning patterns to fabrics as well. i have these perfectionist tendencies when i do detailed work like this, and can get really discouraged if the fabric isn't cut zomg exactly like the pattern. i think the dkny dress took me 2 or 3 evenings to pin down, cut and mark. YEAH I KNOW! a huge waste of time!

aside from the weights, i also decided to try out rotary cutter instead of scissors. i don't know how many times i've read "tips on cutting" from different sewing books, and the only suggestion they have is "cut as closely to the cutting surface as possible." dude, whatever! as soon as you slide the scissors underneath the fabric, you've moved it. so, i got a new rotary blade and got to work. prior to this change in my cutting habits, i've only used my rotary cutter against a metal ruler on straight cuts. why didn't i think that R-O-T-A-R-Y means that you can use it on curves? i'll never know. 

so, how long did it take for me to cut out 4 pieces and mark them with this new cutting method? oh about an hour. that's crazy efficiency from what i am used to. 

so, to stress, in order to de-stress cutting: 

pattern weights (washers) x 10ish
+
rotary cutter
=
no more hair pulling!

(this is probably not news to seasoned seamstresses, but pretty phenomenal for me.)

eta: i only tried this on 100% cotton. not sure if knits/rayon/silk/satin will produce the same results.