A Well Spent Friday Afternoon

I made one of these (the tan one) out of the black sequin fabric. I like it, but I like the front of another one I'd made better.

The one I liked better I made using this pattern.

I thought it wouldn't be too hard to combine the above two patterns to get one that I really like. I like the fact that there is a sleeveless option for the first pattern, and I like the way the front drapes better for the second pattern. Too hard to combine? No. Of course, I encountered difficulty immediately when I could not locate the second pattern. Hmmmm. Would this stop me? Never. I got the one I'd made using it, and went to work.

The beginnings.

 I found three pieces of tissue paper upstairs. Actually, I knew they were there so saying I found them isn't quite accurate. What I did find (but didn't really because, again, I knew it was there) was a cd/dvd case which is the subject of another post another day.

 Once I had the three pieces of tissue paper glued together, I copied some pertinent information from the pattern I had.

 Over that, I pinned the article of clothing I had and began copying more pertinent information. Always fun when working with this type of fabric--one of the 'silkies' from Joann's.

 It always amazes me how not straight a seemingly straight cut can be. Good grief.

 Here, I need to make the pattern for the arm hole work. The penciled in marks are about where the two corners of the pattern you see need to be. Food for thought. I played with it a bit and decided not to take a picture of every single thing I did otherwise there would be way too many. In the end, this is what I came up with:

 Pretty cool, eh?

 Another bit of amazement: the fact that the tissue paper that you just traded many minutes of your time for, just got folded up and looks like that much of nothing. Definitely not indicative of the time spent.

I just love scraps.

Filling the bobbin.

 Yet another bent needle. I seem to be exceptionally good at making these. I wonder if there's a market for them?

And the finished product. Not the greatest picture (which is why it's small) but you get an idea of what it's like, anyway. One of these days perhaps I'll get one of me wearing it.