Biting the Photographic Bullet

At the outset, I would like to thank each of you who left a comment on my last post, as well as those who may have read and sent positive thoughts without a written comment.  Your thoughts, sympathies and good wishes were (and still are) extremely helpful in getting through a difficult period.  It is hard and unreal to think that Mom is no longer here to talk with, ask questions of and share with--especially with regard to our love of sewing, both garment and quilting, which Mom handed down to both me and my sister.  Although I find that I often still have those conversations with her in my head while I am going about things.  I must say also that it was rather heartwarming to know that I was missed in the blogosphere.  And then I went and disappeared again.  sigh.

Now, where were we?  I believe I last left you with a photo of the fabrics I had pulled from the collection to use in a summer 6-PAC grouping of garments a la Stitcher's Guild.  I did get five out of the six pieces completed (I just never felt the need for the lightweight jacket and stalled out on that one) and found them to be quite perfect to wear this summer.  But when it came down to writing a post on the garments, I kept putting it off.  And putting it off.  And putting it off.  Why?

Because one of the pieces is a pair of pants.

We all know that things can look lovely on a dress form.  But then we all think to ourselves "yes, beautiful, but how does it fit?  What does it look like on you?"  You can only show others the fit and flattery (or not) of a garment by showing how it really looks on you.  This is most especially true with pants.  So, I've decided I just need to bite the bullet and start photographing myself wearing some of the garments I make.

This is difficult for me.  I am a large person.  At least, larger than I would like to be.  Nothing brings that home to me more than seeing myself in a photograph.  But you can't just pin a pair of pants to the front of a dress form or hang them on a hanger and expect anyone to be able to see what they are or how they look, or be able to determine if this is a pattern they might like to try out themselves.  And, to me, that's part of my purpose in blogging about what I make--to encourage others to try the patterns I find so fun to make and wear.  So here we go.  Biting the photographic bullet.

Let's start off slow with dress form pictures of the tops and skirt.  The skirt is just my basic straight skirt--a tube of fabric; one seam with a slit opening in the lower seam and an elastic waist.  With only one seam, the slit can be worn to either the side or the back.  This is a natural colored linen.

The first top is OOP Vogue 8582, the Marcy Tilton top with the side drape.  On this one, I cut it with the drape on both sides, but folded the corner of the pattern down, so that the drape is at a lower angle than the original 90 degrees.  The fabric is a gorgeous rayon/lycra knit from Marcy Tilton.

Hopefully, in this photo you can see what I did with the pattern.  The pattern piece on top is the original design lines, with the drape cut to the side at pretty much a 90 degree angle from the side seam.  The bottom pattern piece shows how I simply folded down the upper corner of the drape to achieve the lower angle.  I really like this look!

The second top is McCalls 6566, view C, made in a rayon batik from Fabric.com.  This loose, drapey look may not be the most flattering to me, but this makes such a cool and comfortable summer top that I kind of don't care.  It's hard to see the design detail in this fabric, but I love the slightly gathered lower panel in the back.

The third top is my pattern-morph of the bottom of Vogue 1261 with the top of the StyleArc Adele Top.  For this top I used a oatmeal colored rayon/lycra knit I found at JoAnns.  The color was perfect, but the knit was a little thin to use single layer as a top without showing the world pretty much everything.  So I double layered the front and back body, cutting the upper layer a couple of inches shorter.  The sleeves are single layer.  I love this look.  Unfortunately, the fabric developed a little bit of waviness in stitching the lower hems which didn't want to press out nicely.  Instead of taking the time to rip it out, thereby thoroughly exercising the more colorful side of my vocabulary, I have chosen to like the way it looks with the waviness.  It's a design detail.  Work with me.

This is how I wore this top to work one day with a pair of Cutting Line Designs Easy, Ageless, Cool pants (not part of the intended 6-PAC).

Apparently I need to remember to smile when taking photos.

The pants I made for the 6-PAC were Cutting Line Designs Discover Something Novel pattern, using the same natural linen as the above skirt.  

Love these pants!  They are fun to sew, fun to wear and extremely comfortable.  And it's like Louise Cutting designed this crotch curve just for me.

The back of these pants hang pretty well for me.

I added pockets to the side seams because I am lost without pockets to put my keys in.  I forgot to take a close-up of the pocket detail.

It's a little difficult to see, but I'm very proud of how straight and centered that side seam is!

And one last one with the Vogue 8582.

So.  There it is.  That's me.  I guess that wasn't so bad after all.

I will be doing a more thorough post on the Discover Something Novel pants--I have made several pairs because I love them so much.  And this weekend I made the new Marcy Tilton skirt--love love! So I'll do a post on that and on the latest Lynn Mizono dress that I also finished up this weekend.  Plus several items from previous times that I still want to post about.  That all should keep me busy for awhile.  

So what have you all been up to?