Scarred for Life! The sewing mistake I'll never forget!

I'm sitting in the Anchorage, Alaska Airport awaiting my last 3 flights before I make it home early tomorrow morning. Things have been so crazy and I've been trying so desperately to post but work has had me so busy. I however, when possible, have had fun keeping up with all of your sewing adventures:) The last post I made was on Sewing for Clients: My current project/and Love of doing so (I think that was the title, see last post). I want to resume with my Sewing for Clients: My Strategy Post, but allow me to interject this quick post. I'll tackle the "strategy" post when I'm back at home and am less tired:)

Again, in keeping with the theme of sewing for clients I got to thinking about my most memorable mistakes when sewing for a client. And the one that pops to mind is the one I always think about when I think about my sewing mistakes in general. Believe me, I've definitely made my share, but this one takes the cake.

A few year ago I was asked to make a gown for a friend who was celebrating her 10th Wedding Anniversary. I did it as a gift since I was new at sewing for others and wanted to get my work out there. So we found this pattern Butterick 6533.

And made this dress.....

As you can see the dress turned out quite well, her ceremony was beautiful, and my friend was so delighted that she paid me a nice sum for the dress. In addition I picked up 3 more clients just from the advertisement. Trust me a little Pro-Bono work goes a long way!!!

Ok, back to the point of this post. Although all ended well with this dress, it's thoughts of this dress that always remind me of one of my biggest, almost irreparable snafus. It all started when I was preparing to cut the dress out. I had the pattern pieces perfectly aligned and everything was ready to go. Well for some reason I had to mark something on the fabric. The fabric was a champagne colored crepe back satin. It was so beautiful. Well I grabbed my trusty blue chalk wheel, you know one of these things,

 (I had/have a chalk wheel like the one on the right)

 
and make my mark. From what I remember, before I went into panic mode, is that I made a rather long mark and realized that I did so in the wrong place. When I proceeded to wipe the chalk away I noticed that it would not rub out. It was then that I realized the satin side of the crepe back satin (which was the right side of the garment I was working with) locked in the chalk and it wasn't coming out that easy. In hindsight I should have marked the wrong side of the fabric as I normally do. But I figured the chalk would easily brush out of any fabric. Which of course wasn't the case.  So I thought I'd just rub a little more to get rid of the mark. And still, it didn't even show signs of lifting. So that's when I began to panic!!!! I washed the fabric only to find that the 4" long chalk blue line had faded just a little but still was somewhat evident. I washed it again and it faded out to almost barely noticeable. I think I ran in circles for about an hour frantically trying to figure out what to do. I didn't have any extra fabric---I think I bought all that was on the bolt.  There was no going back, I had to make this work and move forward. So as a final solution and after all of that washing, I did a mad dash to rearrange all of the pattern pieces so that the blue mark would fall on the fish tail train. It did and was barely noticeable to anyone. I even explained it to my friend who didn't notice what I was talking about. I guess we as seamstresses are pretty anal about our work. Needless to say my snafu fortunately didn't ruin the dress.

In hindsight this isn't the worst thing that could possibly have  happen. But I think it was the fact that I made this mistake on someone elses dress instead of my own that intensified the situation. But this snafus WILL FOREVER reign in my mind as my most memorable sewing mistake. That is, until I make another one that takes its place! I cringe at the very thought!!!! But hey, mistakes happen and I won't ever let the possibility of them stop me from sewing--and I know you won't either (wink).  Besides, some of my greatest sewing lessons have been learned from my mistakes. Such is life......  How about you, what's your most memorable sewing mistake????? I'd love to here your story!!!

Wadder Alert: What NOT to do when making the Cynthia Rowley dress #2406

Let me just say this is an awesome pattern if you sew it with the correct fabric (and fit it appropriately of course). I however did not.  For starters do not use 4 way stretch knit for this dress. You know I kinda had the feeling when I embarked on this project that a stretchy knit might be problematic but I decided to give it a go anyway. So to be quite honest I'm not that suprised that this pattern didn't work for me since I picked the wrong fabric. I just didn't expect it to turn out looking like a muumuu LOL! And no, I will not post a pic because it seriously looks just like a muumuu!!!LOL! And unfortunately sewing deeper side seams wouldn't fix this since it's the fabric that's really the issue. But I don't feel like it was too much of a waste. I learned my gut instinct about my wrong fabric choice was right in addition to a few other things.

As they say hindsight is 20/20 so thinking back here are a few things I should have done:

1. Picked a lighter fabric.
This dress would have been perfect in the recommended fabrics of linen, cotton, etc--you know lighter fabrics that hold the shape of this garment well.  The 4-way knit I had stretched to fit my body and stretched this dress out of it's proper shape. A 2 way stretch knit (stretch crosswise and not lengthwise) would have been suitable as well.

2. Made a muslin.
 You know I RARELY make a muslin when sewing a knit dress. But with a design as unique as this (with the draped shoulder and open back slit) I should have.  I cut this dress in a size 12 and due to the ease of the pattern and weight and stretch of my fabric it ended up being just way too BIG. I had a feeling it would stretch somewhat but had no idea that the weight would really pull the dress down. So this "dragging" in turn distorted the shape of the sleeves and every part of the dress.

3. Shortened the back length.
I've mentioned so many times before that I have a really small back (14"L, 14"W). Why in the world I didn't think to check the back lenght before sewing this dress is beyond me. By the time this dress was nearly finished I discovered that the back opening was well beyond my back to the top of my rear! That was noooooo good indeed! Talk about scandalous.........LOL!

4. My greatest lesson learned from this project was that I need to give up watching TV while sewing. You might recall me devoting an entire post to the subject HERE.  Believe it or not this is the BEST lesson that has come from this situation and I've already noticed an increase in my productivity. So I'm not all too crushed about the loss of this project.

I plan to give this pattern a rest for now and pick up something else. I probably will revisit in the future in a nice linen or cotton fabric.  It's a great pattern and is pretty easy to sew if you don't get turned around with the sleeve directions. To be quite honest some of their directions for that were written a little confusing. But beyond that I recommend it wholeheartedly.