Thursday, June 18, 2009

Time Out For Garment Sewing

Not much time for sewing these days as I've been busy grading end of the semester papers for my students and also helping to take care of elderly relations. This past month my aunt, the one with Alzheimer's whom I previously wrote about here, fell down and broke her hip. Then my father had a mini-stroke, and as soon as he got out of the hospital, my mum came down a bad case of stomach flu.

So my sewing impulse has been confined to the vicarious thrill of browsing sewing blogs, particularly those devoted to vintage patterns. Though I feel a little dinosaur-like when reading about vintage patterns from the '70s. Hey, I was alive then! Anyway, I finally succumbed. I bought Simplicity 8667 from 1978. It looks like a nice basic dress (with pockets -- yay!) which is something I could really use right now for work. I hope it's not too young looking for me. Currently my wardrobe consists of a few extremely worn denim dresses and some skirts that have become too big in the waist thanks to back-elastic that has become limp with age.

My only problem with the pattern is that I I bought a size 11/12 Young Jr. Teen based on what I thought was my bust measurement which falls between the 9/10 and 11/12. But due to an inadvertent weight loss, my bust is now smaller than I thought. (At my last doctor's visit I was down to 113 -- yikes!) And in fact, I used to wear a 9/10 back in the '70s. I just thought that after four pregnancies my shape had changed enough that I'd need the larger size. Now I'm not so sure.

I've consulted with the folks at PatternReview.com, and I think there's nothing for it but to make a muslin. Dang!

By the way, I bought the pattern from Ditzy Prints and I was very pleased with the transaction.