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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2ZNamuL
I don’t have good photos or a proper tutorial for this but I’m going to tell the story anyway.
Last weekend my dude went through his closet and set out a pile of clothes he didn’t want to wear anymore. He mostly wears button-down dress shirts by day and t-shirts to sleep in, so the discard pile was just a huge collection of dress shirts, with two t-shirts. I went through them again, and sorted out three that weren’t badly worn, just didn’t fit or weren’t to his taste in some way. Those, I can donate or do something along those lines with. The others, though, all had worn or faded or torn bits, little stuff here and there, but it all meant they weren’t things anyone would want in their current form.
So I cut three of the shirts apart and used them to construct a muslin of a dress pattern I wanted to test. This is a thing that’s always stymied me, in sewing– the idea that not only do I have to cut into nice new fabric to make a thing, but i have to do it twice. I know you need to make a muslin (or a toile, whatever, IDK the difference) if you really want to make a garment that fits you properly, but it’s always seemed so expensive and wasteful.
Now, using old shirts for fabric isn’t a new idea, but the twist I have on this is that my dude is a very thin person, and I am a rather fat person, and so I can’t just place a pattern piece on a bit of his shirt and actually cut it out. So to deconstruct the shirts, I removed the sleeves and the back yoke, and left everything else connected. And indeed, my bodice pattern pieces extended beyond the side seams of the backs of the shirts. Even the sleeves of the muslin were larger than any of the sleeves I’d cut out of his shirts, so I had to cut apart that third shirt to get the sleeves out of the big back panel.
And then I needed the majority of an old twin bedsheet to get the skirt out of. I needed the skirt because it did change the fit of the bodice considerably to have all that weight on it.
I may at some point cut the rest of the shirts up and then, carefully matching the grain, patchwork them into another large usable hunk of fabric. I might do that and I might not. Either way, though, this muslin would’ve taken three yards at least of new fabric, and I’d have been able to pick it apart to make a different muslin out of it maybe, but maybe not– the bodice includes several darts.
I might wear it as-is, but I might take it apart. We’ll see. It’d be a reasonably fun farm-work dress, if I get several pockets into it, but might not be so great for work-work. (The colors don’t clash but they only coordinate if you’re kind of. From a different planet, I think.)
The thing to keep in mind is that the drape of a bedsheet is markedly inferior to that of like, any nice fabric at all, so if I make this dress from linen or rayon, as I want to, it’s going to fit completely differently. However! Having the pattern adjusted correctly because I made a muslin is only going to help with that, and maybe it’ll get me to actually be able to bring myself to cut into new fabric…
terrible photos behind cut:
the three shirts in question (yes, very classy)
the only photo so far of it on me, featuring a weird lens reflection of a CFL bulb (that’s the weird green spiral in midair) and my armpit, pre-sleeve-attachment
you see how that needs a whole nother dart. Also you can see how I had to use the back and side of the original shirts, both of them, to eke out enough material for my ginormous hoots.
Yah this dress looks super awkward. If I’m going to actually wear it as-is, I’m going to refine the fit to update the pattern, and then I’m going to spend a ton of time and effort adding pockets and embellishments. I think a bunch of applique wouldn’t go amiss. Is it worth that much effort? Well, is anything worth anything?
I don’t have good photos or a proper tutorial for this but I’m going to tell the story anyway.
Last weekend my dude went through his closet and set out a pile of clothes he didn’t want to wear anymore. He mostly wears button-down dress shirts by day and t-shirts to sleep in, so the discard pile was just a huge collection of dress shirts, with two t-shirts. I went through them again, and sorted out three that weren’t badly worn, just didn’t fit or weren’t to his taste in some way. Those, I can donate or do something along those lines with. The others, though, all had worn or faded or torn bits, little stuff here and there, but it all meant they weren’t things anyone would want in their current form.
So I cut three of the shirts apart and used them to construct a muslin of a dress pattern I wanted to test. This is a thing that’s always stymied me, in sewing– the idea that not only do I have to cut into nice new fabric to make a thing, but i have to do it twice. I know you need to make a muslin (or a toile, whatever, IDK the difference) if you really want to make a garment that fits you properly, but it’s always seemed so expensive and wasteful.
Now, using old shirts for fabric isn’t a new idea, but the twist I have on this is that my dude is a very thin person, and I am a rather fat person, and so I can’t just place a pattern piece on a bit of his shirt and actually cut it out. So to deconstruct the shirts, I removed the sleeves and the back yoke, and left everything else connected. And indeed, my bodice pattern pieces extended beyond the side seams of the backs of the shirts. Even the sleeves of the muslin were larger than any of the sleeves I’d cut out of his shirts, so I had to cut apart that third shirt to get the sleeves out of the big back panel.
And then I needed the majority of an old twin bedsheet to get the skirt out of. I needed the skirt because it did change the fit of the bodice considerably to have all that weight on it.
I may at some point cut the rest of the shirts up and then, carefully matching the grain, patchwork them into another large usable hunk of fabric. I might do that and I might not. Either way, though, this muslin would’ve taken three yards at least of new fabric, and I’d have been able to pick it apart to make a different muslin out of it maybe, but maybe not– the bodice includes several darts.
I might wear it as-is, but I might take it apart. We’ll see. It’d be a reasonably fun farm-work dress, if I get several pockets into it, but might not be so great for work-work. (The colors don’t clash but they only coordinate if you’re kind of. From a different planet, I think.)
The thing to keep in mind is that the drape of a bedsheet is markedly inferior to that of like, any nice fabric at all, so if I make this dress from linen or rayon, as I want to, it’s going to fit completely differently. However! Having the pattern adjusted correctly because I made a muslin is only going to help with that, and maybe it’ll get me to actually be able to bring myself to cut into new fabric…
terrible photos behind cut:
the three shirts in question (yes, very classy)
the only photo so far of it on me, featuring a weird lens reflection of a CFL bulb (that’s the weird green spiral in midair) and my armpit, pre-sleeve-attachment
you see how that needs a whole nother dart. Also you can see how I had to use the back and side of the original shirts, both of them, to eke out enough material for my ginormous hoots.
Yah this dress looks super awkward. If I’m going to actually wear it as-is, I’m going to refine the fit to update the pattern, and then I’m going to spend a ton of time and effort adding pockets and embellishments. I think a bunch of applique wouldn’t go amiss. Is it worth that much effort? Well, is anything worth anything?
