Mom came through two times last month on either side of her visit with New Nephew, and her encouragement gave me the strength I needed to finally work on my Outlander White Dress costume I started over a month ago.
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| Ignore the clompy shoes -- borrowed husband's until I can find the right pair |
For a reminder, here's what the costume is supposed to look like.
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| Nice to have some dark, wavy-haired character options. No wig necessary! |
- Fabric will determine at least 80% of how difficult your project will be. I came into this project with two difficult fabrics to work with: a super stretchy white scuba knit for the dress and a plaid for the shawl that was printed on only one side of the fabric. As far as the stretchy fabric goes, it was at least 3x harder to cut the pattern, pin the pieces, and sew because the stupid fabric kept morphing shapes. When I was sewing, if I didn't hold on to both ends tightly as the machine went down the seam, the fabric slipped and came out lopsided. You don't even want to see how lopsided the shoulders are! As for the plaid, because the fabric was only printed on one side I had to fold it in half and sew it. YOU try lining up a tiny plaid print while sewing a seam 3 yards long! The fabric was also not a true "flannel" like it said it was, and I wasn't able to create fringe just by ripping threads out. Mom and I came up with an idea to use yarn and hem tape to create a row of fringe on the ends, then sew it in tight. Basically, if my next fabric is some nice, tame, boring cotton I will come out looking like a genius seamstress because of the trial by fabric fire I just endured.
- Stretch stitches are Satan. So I spent forever researching stretch stitches because I was told I needed them to help deal with the problems of knit. Well, possibly they work better than normal stitches, but they can a) never EVER be ripped out if you make a mistake and b) only work when sewing stretchy fabrics. This sounds redundant, but imagine my surprise when using a stretch stitch to sew a zipper to a stretchy fabric resulted in a heck of a lot of bunching because the zipper was a normal fabric, not stretchy. DOH! On the plus side, I guarantee I can boss a zipper into place on normal fabric now. So halfway through the project I switched to zig-zag stitches which seemed to be work just fine for a costume I'll only wear a few times.
- Basting produces miracles. I am super proud of how well my sleeves attached. See the exposed shoulder in the below picture. I credit all of this to the miracle of basting, which is sewing a loose stitch (or in this case, hand-stitching) the seam you want to sew before you put it through the machine. By pinning the shoulder/sleeve with 100 pins and then basting it by hand, I was able to sew a seamless (ha!) seam for both sleeves. After my zipper nightmare, I was nearly in tears with happiness.
- Top stitching hems also produces miracles. I also discovered that the wonky, uneven hems I'm used to are because I haven't been top-stitching the hem. Basically, I've been folding under the fabric about an inch and then sewing it on the inside at an even distance from the end. Problem is, the fabric is almost never cut evenly, so by following the bottom line of the fabric I've been producing some pretty wavy hems. So this time I folded the fabric under an inch, ironed and pinned it, then flipped it over and sewed an even 5/8" all the way around (with a zig zag stitch for maximum non-wonkiness). The result was the neatest looking hem I've ever produced. Huzzah!
- Interfacing is powerful, but I still haven't mastered it. Interfacing produced the really neat looking collar line and tear-drop notch on the front of my dress. Mom helped me with a lot of this, and without her help I think I would have given up. Interfacing is magic because it makes your collar look substantial, finished, and neat. However, if you keep doing it wrong like I was, it can make things look bulky. Still need to work on this.
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| 6. Spanx and push-up bras are necessary staging equipment. Duh. |
The good news is I have accomplished my goal of having at least one costume ready to wear for Dragon*Con on Labor Day weekend! In addition, thanks to Mom walking me through my first start-to-finish dress pattern, I am feeling a LOT more confident about sewing and can't wait to try another costume. Hmm... I have a few ideas floating around in my head and more than enough fabric to back it up. Should I attempt my Jane Austen dress? Belle from Beauty and the Beast? Dr. Marcus from Star Trek? Or maybe even Rey from Star Wars?
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| Bonus points to husband, who braved the mosquitos to be my photographer |
I can't decide. Guess I'll just have to do all of them :)
Time Spent: 3 full days
Total Cost: $40 (not counting belt and shoes, which were stolen from hubby)
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