Groovy!

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce, I have lost my sew-jo. For several months I've had no inspiration and feel so unmotivated, and my lack of drive sits like a lead weight in soul, keeping me immobile. It's like I've lost my passion, my one purpose in hahahaha can you imagine.

It's true that I've been in a bit of a sewing rut lately but I promise, I'm not in anguish about it. We all need breaks, even from the things we do in our downtime. I just felt like taking the piss and roleplaying as a tortured artist for a bit. Anyway, I wouldn't bother writing a post if I didn't have anything new to showcase, so here, the newest addition to the handmade wardrobe:

This is a uncomplicated minidress made out of a viscose/linen blend. I enjoy fluid, abstract patterns and this one's bright and loud, so I balanced it by pairing it with a simple silhouette. It's shorter than I'd normally opt for, but a dress like this should be fun and playful rather than conservative.

I was strategic about design and construction specifically because I was in my rut. I knew that if I wanted a complete and finished garment, I would have to ease myself back into it. The project itself was purposefully designed around the idea of having as few seams as necessary. I'll break down all the things I did to make my life easier:

1) Cut fewer pieces. Typically for a fitted dress back seam zipper I would have 6 main pieces: 1 front bodice, 1 front skirt, 2 back bodice pieces, and 2 back skirt pieces. I combined the bodice and skirt pieces and eliminated the waist seam, reducing everything to 3 main pieces: 1 front, and 2 back pieces. This also reduces the number of darts you sew in half, even if the darts you do sew become twice as long. It also means you don't have to match each dart to another dart. Lastly, using fewer pieces means fewer seam lines disrupting the print.

2) Fudged the fit. Months ago I made a muslin of a sheath dress using a mix of my bodice sloper and M8051, a pencil skirt pattern. Both these patterns fit me fine individually, but they didn't combine well and I wasn't about to spend time forcing them to cooperate. I tossed M8051, took the sloper, added a skirt's amount of length with a slight flare, did the math, and expanded the waist darts down to the skirt. I erred on the side of having too much ease in the hips knowing I could take some in later if I needed to.

Darts: not noticeable to the average person who isn't looking for them.

3) Fully lined the dress, but did not sew darts in the lining. If your lining is thin enough it shouldn't make a difference. I can't feel any extra bulk. I figured that, in the same way many coat linings have a greater amount of ease than the coat shell despite being on the interior, this should also work, and it does.

Full lining, plus where I accidentally cut a hole when grading seam allowance. Salvaged!

4) Used a regular zipper instead of an invisible one. From a distance no one can tell and no one cares what kind of zipper I used anyway. I did the technique where you baste the back seam closed, sew the zipper along that seam line, and then open it up with a seam ripper afterwards. Someone who is really good at sewing invisible zippers on the first try without incident could challenge me on this one, but I am not that person so I will opt for the zipper that's faster for ME to install.

5) Sewed inseam pockets instead of the usual favored patch pockets. I don't find either kind more difficult to do, it's that patch pockets would have required me to spend time figuring out where on the skirt to place them so they appear right. I would have had to try on the nearly completed dress and determined the pocket placement on my body. Inseam pockets, however, are invisible and I don't care how high or low they are as long as they're hip-level, approximately. So in this particular instance, inseam pockets were the faster option. It was only later that decided that I didn't want any extraneous seam lines breaking up the print, so it worked out anyway.

6) This is not a time-saving tactic, but a sanity-saving one: tacking down the pockets to the lining was absolutely necessary to remedy my annoyance with inseam pockets in general. There's no waistband or waistline seam to anchor them to, and unless I found it acceptable to allow the pocket bags to flap around from front to back, I could not skip this step.

I've outlined where the pocket bags are in red. Those narrow rectangles of stitching are where the pockets are anchored to the lining. There is fusible interfacing for reinforcement along the stitch lines.

And one notable thing I didn't do: buy a damn commercial dress pattern and let the Big 4 do all the work for me. If I had, I could have eliminated numbers 1 and 2 as necessary steps so ultimately I didn't really make this as easy as I could have. Yes, I would have needed to make a toile, but remaking a garment a couple of times more time-consuming than difficult. Evidence that my creative fortitude is not completely gone, if I'm willing to inconvenience challenge myself. Am I completely free from my sewing block? Probably not, but I also don't really see it as an obstacle to force myself through. What did it mean if I used to get itchy any time I wasn't actively working on something? A more optimistic perspective, is just that my inspiration runs through me a little less frantically than it used to.