I'm Better Now

Okay. I think I'm ready to talk about it. The cause of all my frustration was Simplicity 2936. I had passed this pattern by many times. The picture on the envelope (That fabric! Those sleeves!) was not attractive, and it looked like one of those necklines that's forever exposing your bra straps. After checking the pattern on Pattern Review, however, I saw a few reviews that made it look pretty nice. The neck wasn't anywhere as open, and no one chose those crazy sleeves!

The fabric I used was not from my stash. A trip to the fabric store with my mom and 50% off clearance fabric yielded a brown cotton stripe. I wasn't too crazy about the metallic thread running through it, but for what I paid? Good enough. The one thing I didn't consider was the texture of the fabric: crinkled. How the heck are you supposed to iron seams without ironing out the crinkles? In the past, I've just ironed the crinkles out completely before cutting. That's probably what I should have done this time, too, but I wanted the crinkles.

My next problem came while cutting. I got confused while cutting a sleeve and ended up cutting on the wrong line. I've never done that before, and I felt like a dope. Luckily, I had enough fabric to recut the sleeve after taping the pattern back together (and marking the correct line on the pattern so I wouldn't do it again).

Okay, now it gets good. As one of the reviewers mentions on Pattern Review, the directions about what to do with the front facing are not clear. The written directions say one thing, while the little picture diagram shows another. The reviewer went with the written directions, while I went with the picture.

Everything seemed to be going okay, until it came time to sew on the facing. The directions got a little skimpy right when I needed them the most. I tried on the top at this stage and it didn't seem to fit correctly at the back of the neck. I went back to the reviews to see if anyone else had this problem, but I couldn't really tell from the pictures. This led to my questioning my decision earlier, which led to ripping out stitches, which didn't seem to change anything, which led to restitching, which led to a messy seam, which led to ripping out again, which...you get the picture.

At this point I figured the top was going to be a mess anyway, so I just wanted to finish the stupid thing and donate it to the thrift shop. I slapped the hem in, raced through the buttonholes, and sewed on the buttons as fast as I could. What the heck, let me try it on. Well, it isn't as bad as I thought, but now it has a crappy hem and crooked buttonholes!

Oh, the sleeves. My intention was NOT to worry about matching the stripes on the sleeves. I'm actually sort of annoyed that one sleeve came out kind of matched up, because that makes the other one look bad. But, really, I never meant to have them match!