Friday, January 13, 2012

Cloning a Shirt (Well, reading about it really...)

Well, I actually worked on cloning a shirt that I started a month or two ago when I took the online class at PR. It involves lots of pinning and sketching and unpinning and lining up and drawing and repinning, and I finally got tired of that and just used weights on the paper and organza while I drew the lines. It's just a simple knit shirt so we'll see if that works or not. I actually finished the pattern pieces and started to cut them out yesterday, then I realized I forgot to add seam allowances. So I did that to the front and back, but I forgot to do it to the sleeve - DOH!

I found some old knit fabric to use as the muslin and barely had enough to cut it out. I had to cut 2 back pieces instead of cutting on the fold, but I did get that serged together (I'm just so happy that I actually turned a machine on yesterday). And I realized how much I rely on pattern instructions for the layout, etc. So that made me pull out my Easy Guide to Sewing by MacIntyre and Tilton to learn how to construct the shirt and do a neck binding. (I thought there was a way to put binding on flat before you sew the shoulder seams, but they don't mention that...maybe Betzina said that...maybe I just made it up.)

Anyway, so now I'm dug into the book, and it seems to be an excuse to keep from going up there and just sewing the thing up! Why do I do that? Of course I don't want to screw it up, but seriously, I can sidetrack myself so easy with books and DVD's and googling techniques, etc. Does anybody else do that?

1 comment:

Pam said...

Good luck S!! I took that class too and never finished cloning a garment - I am excited to see yours!