I feel the need …….

…….. the need to tweak.  (as in patterns …. not body parts)

Ready to wear clothing has a distinct advantage in the design stage, in comparison to home sewn clothing.  The design phase usually has many many steps, where a design is pattern developed, tested, more development, and more testing …. before the finished style hits the shops.  This means that mistakes, unbalanced points, and stuff that just plain doesn’t work is all weeded out before we see the ready to sell product.

Home sewing doesn’t have that luxury.  The lack of local milling means that we don’t have access to inexpensive fabric, and generally, can’t afford to throw away good fabric on experimentation.  So while we rely on pattern makers to have a error free product, there is the need to adjust designs to allow for individual taste and body proportions.

I made up a design recently, which due to the complexity of the pattern, and google-centricity (new word made by me) of the instructions……. took me 3 times as long as I usually did to make.  I referred to it as Satan’s Own Pattern.  Now despite the troubles I had with it, the top actually fit really well, and suited my figure.  But, there were aspects I hated ….. no idea if the instructions included seam allowances, rolled edge hemming instead of turned up hemming is a fast sewing technique, but not a neat finish.  And a floaty, large width sleeve is not my natural choice.    And so …. I tweaked the design.  Replace the floaty sleeve with a gathered one from another pattern, lower the back collar height, add seam allowances all around to give me some more ease, and add hem allowance to the sleeves and hem to give a more professional finish.    And overall I am very happy with the result.  This is definitely a top I will wear to work.

Now the problem I have, is that I feel the need to tweak the design more. A dart along the top of the shoulder will take up a lot of the “puffy” effect, meaning the sleeve would sit better. But, tweaking means I would have another version of the same top …. not exactly the most style conscious thing to do. hhhmmmm ….. maybe I will wait for a fabric to call out for it, and try it then.