Adventures in Sewing: Angela's Chinoiserie Shirt & Pattern Alteration
On Friday, my sister and I went downtown to the garment district to buy fabric for a shirt for her. Angela fell in love with a blue and gold chinoiserie print of pagodas and weeping willows on black polyester satin. Really, it was much classier than that description makes it sound. She wanted a shirt with a vaguely Asian style to it, to match the fabric. When I showed her the pattern I'd used for the Kumiko Shirt, she loved it and decided that her Chinoiserie Shirt had to be the same pattern.
This meant I had to alter the pattern because the one I had used for my shirt was a size (12,14,16) and Angela is about a size 4 in off-the-rack clothing, she is probably a size 2 in sewing pattern sizing. Butterick doesn't even offer that pattern in a size 4. So I raided my stash of gift-wrap tissue paper (I never throw it out, because it always comes in handy for last-minute gift wrapping, or, now, pattern-making) and sketched out copies of the "upper front" and "upper back" pattern pieces, reducing their sizes to fit Angela's measurements.
After that we pinned and cut and sewed and cussed and removed stitches and fitted and gathered and sewed and removed stitches and sewed again until the top was done. All-in-all I think it was a good introduction to sewing for Angela. She cut out her pattern pieces, and the fabric. She got to sew a bit with the sewing machine and sew a bit by hand, and, as befits any sewing novice, she got to spend a lot of quality time with the seam ripper.
Angie was happy with her Chinoiserie Shirt, and even happier when I told her that she would get to do the next thing we sewed all by herself with only minor assistance from me.
On Friday, my sister and I went downtown to the garment district to buy fabric for a shirt for her. Angela fell in love with a blue and gold chinoiserie print of pagodas and weeping willows on black polyester satin. Really, it was much classier than that description makes it sound. She wanted a shirt with a vaguely Asian style to it, to match the fabric. When I showed her the pattern I'd used for the Kumiko Shirt, she loved it and decided that her Chinoiserie Shirt had to be the same pattern.
This meant I had to alter the pattern because the one I had used for my shirt was a size (12,14,16) and Angela is about a size 4 in off-the-rack clothing, she is probably a size 2 in sewing pattern sizing. Butterick doesn't even offer that pattern in a size 4. So I raided my stash of gift-wrap tissue paper (I never throw it out, because it always comes in handy for last-minute gift wrapping, or, now, pattern-making) and sketched out copies of the "upper front" and "upper back" pattern pieces, reducing their sizes to fit Angela's measurements.
After that we pinned and cut and sewed and cussed and removed stitches and fitted and gathered and sewed and removed stitches and sewed again until the top was done. All-in-all I think it was a good introduction to sewing for Angela. She cut out her pattern pieces, and the fabric. She got to sew a bit with the sewing machine and sew a bit by hand, and, as befits any sewing novice, she got to spend a lot of quality time with the seam ripper.
Angie was happy with her Chinoiserie Shirt, and even happier when I told her that she would get to do the next thing we sewed all by herself with only minor assistance from me.
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