I lasted posted about my sewing class on the 12th November and as it's now the 8th December you would think I would be near to finishing the dress by now (or by Tasia's speed I'd be on about my 5th dress by now!)...but unfortunately not....
So last time I was telling you that I would be using a 'Pattern Master' to grade my pattern. But what is a 'Pattern Master', I thought...well this is a Pattern Master:
(sorry about these photos - they were taken on my iPhone)
The teacher had to get around the whole class and make sure they were all marking and cutting their fabric properly so she left me to 'stick all my pattern pieces to the dotted pattern paper'. I was a little curious as to why I had to do this....but teacher knows best. This took a long time - this pattern has a lot of pieces!
Eventually I had finished and I managed to get the teachers attention and she came to assist with the grading. I reminded her that I wanted to grade down from a size 16 in the hips to a size 12 in the bust. 'Ah', She said. Apparently I didn't need to stick my pattern to the paper at all - she thought I was going to be grading up to a bigger size than I had cut out! WAAAAA - I had spent sooooo long doing that...for nothing! Now I had to either try and unstick it all or cut around it all. More time wasting. After I had done that the teacher was back and did show me how to use the Pattern Master to draw a nice curving line from the hips to the smaller bust - and marking it through matching pieces. So at least I did learn something from the whole class. But that's all I did during one 2 hours class!
The next class I spent cutting out my fabric - again quite a slow process as I wanted to make sure the plaid was lined up when I cut through two layers.
The next class I was informed that I needed to serge all the pieces...but the teacher again decided she needed to check everyone else was settled and ok before she helped me thread the serger (on a side note - it's so great to get to use a serger as I don't have my own. The class is held in a college which runs a fashion course so they have a room full of industrial sewing machines and sergers! So cool - I'll try and get some photos for you)! After almost an hour of waiting I started serging...and stayed on after the 2 hour class was up to make sure I got all the pieces serged (there are about 12 in this dress!) before going home as I didn't want to waste any more time in my next class waiting around again! That might sound like I was serging at a snails pace....but as i said, it'd the first time I've used one of those machines and I wanted to do it as neatly as possible (and not cut off half of my fabric - those machines are brutal!!!!!)
And then last night I didn't make it to my class because we had really heavy snow. But I took my project home with me and...wait for it...started sewing!!! So I have sewn my first ever kick-pleat and sewn the two back sides to the back with princess seams. Next up is an invisible back zipper.
Phew! Sorry for the super word-intensive post!! Next up date on the dress will have lots more photos.
A few weeks ago I managed to finally finish off a long over due unfinished project (which I mentioned here) so I'll be blogging about that next week. I'm really pleased with the finished result - I just wish it was warmer so that I could wear it!!!
