Gaping Armhole Tutorial

So, when I made my first muslin the of the Sorbetto top from Colette patterns, I had a lot of gaping at the armholes.

I notice people taling about this problem a lot on blogs during the summer months, what with all of the sleeveless tops and dresses, and I thought I would do a tutorial on how to get rid that that excess and put it in the bust dart. (You can just make an armhole dart, but I like to move that dart into the bust dart. Just to be tidy.) Since the tutorial was so picture heavy, I decided to upload it onto the burdastyle website. (Also, I just wanted to try their tutorial format.) You can check it out here.

Look Ma, no gaping armhole!

Summer Lounging Dress

I have a new red dress.

I made this from my 3 piece dress sloper (dress front, dress back, and sleeves as opposed to my 5 piece sloper which is bodice front and back, skirt front and back, and sleeve.) See how nicely the back fits?

I knew going into this that this silhouette was not going to be that flattering on me, but I don't always want to wear a fitted dress in the summer. (I am an hourglass and fitted dresses are the way to go with my figure. Otherwise you can't tell how small my waist is and only my widest points are emphasized.) I'm a little underwhelmed, but I know that will go away once I wear the dress a few times. (I've worn my cloud 6 or 7 dress a few times now and feel pretty cute when I do.) This is going to be a perfect dress for climbing into the hammock and "reading." (Do you like how I have convinced both you and myself that Seattle will someday get warm enough where I will need a floaty little dress?)

• The fabric is a lightweight linen from fabric.com.
• No closures. It fits over the head.
• It's loosely based on the deep impact dress from Built by Wendy Dresses.
• It has very narrow darts in the back to give it a little shape.
• It has a once piece neck/armhole facing in the front and back.
• I am trying to put more details on my dresses, but I went super plain on this one because I usually think linen looks best with super clean lines.
• Because there are no details for distraction, I took special care to make sure the sewing was done well.
• It's a little low in the front, but I did that on purpose. It is summer after all.
• It appears to dip in the front hem, but I don't see that in the side view or in real life. I'm ignoring this.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with this. Lately I've been feeling a little let down after I finish a project, which is weird because I have been doing some of my best sewing ever. I dunno what is up with that. It seems to be more prevalent with patterns that I make myself. It may be because I have expectations of what the item will look like, but I am not quite able to get my head and my hands to completely agree. (This happens in my artwork all the time, and there I view it as a plus. I might just need to let go of some of my perfectionism here.) Once I wear the dress a couple of time, I think I forget what I wanted it to be, and am just happy with what it is.

On Cloud 6 or 7

My friend Jonathan sent me some fabric from Tokyo for my birthday. I took my pink birthday dress and modified it into this little number. Since I stitched it for Faye's latest challenge, you can get the details over there, if you are so inclined.