Sewcial Bee!

I didn't think that I'd be able to participate in the Sewcial Bee this month, because it just happened to be the same weekend as my extended family's annual hangout at the beach. Doug and I were only planning on going down for the Saturday, but Sundays are usually also pretty busy with church activities. When he requested that we stay home for the afternoon/evening so he could relax, though, I jumped right in!
My project is not done yet, though I've only technically used 4 1/2 of the allotted 7 hours. I just haven't picked it up since my sewing binge on Sunday, since I either haven't been home to sew or I've been working on finishing the gift sewing. (Deadline is next weekend, but I'm down to hand-sewing. Which I hope to get a lot of done today, since two of my friends are coming over for crafting, which means they'll crochet and I'll do this.) But since I haven't been able to post what I've been making otherwise, I hope you don't mind a little sneak peek!

The theme was "garment inspired by food". And this was not an easy thing for me to come up with, because my stash doesn't exactly scream edibles at me! My first thought was one of the many green pieces in my stash and say it's vegetables, but I wasn't feeling it. Then I saw some cherry-print cotton left over from this apron that I made for a friend years ago. There was only maybe enough for pockets, but I could almost hear Nina Garcia yelling at me that it was too literal.

Then I saw this paisley knit stuff that my mom gave me for Christmas a few years ago, and it finally clicked. Because it reminds me of Reeses' Pieces. I didn't think I had enough to make the entire pattern that I had in mind (a Cake pattern, what else would fit a food challenge?), so I added some chocolate brown knit, and I had a plan!

The first step, of course, was to trace out the pattern. I had a little debate about what size to trace, because I was pretty much right on the sizing line between a 30 and a 35. After some quick advice on Twitter about how the cup sizes work, I decided to try the 35 and take in as needed. This process took about 45 minutes.

Cutting took me longer than I'd anticipated. The print wasn't quite 1-way, but it wasn't quite not, and I ended up doing a lot of flipping and turning and attempting to get the pattern to match up as best as I could while cutting single-layer. As you can see, I still pretty much botched it up, but hopefully it'll turn out ok when the skirt is actually sewn together.









This is where things stood at the end of the 4 1/2 hours, when my husband was up and about again and it was late enough that dinner was becoming a necessity. (He ordered pizza so I could sew as long as possible-- I definitely got a keeper!) The front band being shorter than the back band isn't an accident--when I sewed it as is, the front was very gappy and saggy. I'm sure this will mean some kind of alteration for whenever I use this pattern again, but for this one, I basically just pulled the overlap so that the notches lined up where the gathering stopped, and that pretty much made it perfect! So I trimmed down the front band to match, so I wouldn't lose the sleeve shaping. My waistband pieces traced out very oddly anyway, with a very sharp curve, so that's something that needed to be fixed.

I'm pleased with how this is turning out so far, and I think the addition of the solid was a good move, because this print as an entire dress would probably be way too much! (The skirt will be the print as well, and the sleeves will also be trimmed in the brown.) Steph's instructions are stellar, and I'm having no trouble with adapting instructions for the serger where needed. So even though I didn't finish within the timeframe of the Sewcial Bee, I think that this will be a very sweet dress to take me into the fall!