Faille not

I sometimes wonder what all of the fabric choices on the back of pattern envelopes are all about.  You have a good idea about what denim, linen, and gingham are, for example, but there’s always other suggestions that are a bit more obscure.  This top was an attempt to fill in a gap in my knowledge about one of those obscurities.

Faille.  It’s defined as a glossy, soft, finely-ribbed, silk-like woven fabric made from
cotton, silk, or manufactured fibers, especially rayon. It has a crosswise rib weave and the soft material drapes well. It is finer than grosgrain and with flatter ribs. It is difficult to launder but will give good wear if handled properly. Has a lustrous finish.

I bought this particular cotton faille with a gift certificate to Denver Fabrics for my birthday.  It’s lovely.  Lovely.  I had read all of these nasties about faille being awful to work with, but this was quite stable, pressed like a champion (hence the pleated trim that I added)

 and is absurdly comfortable to wear.  It was NOT difficult to launder (or rather my current occupation drives me to dump in lengths of fabric with whatever spit up drenched garment doesn’t pass the smell test and if it survives, hey, it’s ready to sew).  How a fabric can be dense, yet breathable and drapey is beyond me.  I’m keeping an eye out for nice faille from now on.

Butterick 5485

What I learned (besides that faille is awesome)

Repetitive altering:  Do you have those alterations that you do so much that you forget that you have to do them.  That would be short waistedness for me.  It’s pretty typical to have to take out 2-3″ in everything for me.  Yup, I forgot it on this top. Doh.  Hey, it’s tunic length–I *meant* to do that.

Other than that, there was not much to this top.  It took me less time to make than it did to find time for Nathan to take my picture and write about it all.  Actually I’m a little backlogged in my reviewing and posting because the kids’ naptime is my only consistent time to get anything done.  Nevertheless, my review is here.

This is my last summery sort of sewing.  There’s a jacket in pieces in the sewing room and some warmer knits coming soon.  I’m so glad it’s getting cool enough to wear ITY again–there’s so much of it in the stash.

Short little waists

I love the idea of a wrap dress.  How can a garment with no closures that you just toss on plus maybe a necklace not be appealing?  That you look like a lady in such a garment–bonus.

I’ve been watching some of Peggy Sagers’ webcasts for Silhouette Patterns because there’s some good info in them, and they’re free.  At any rate, I was watching the sheath dress draping one, and Peggy was wearing Diane’s Wrap Dress.  When she came to the sew expo in July, I picked up the pattern because it looked so darn cute on her and she was talking on the webcast about it not gaping at all.

I picked up some mystery mystery fabric.  I have no idea what this stuff is.  It’s a sateen weave, and maybe there’s some cotton, and there’s definitely a little lycra, but it’s kind of anybody’s guess what the rest is.  Not too keen to burn test, I decided that mystery fabric at $4/yd was good enough for me.

I was a little scared of a pattern that yields a finished garment of 38″ at the bust as the smallest size.  I was concerned it’d be too wide in the shoulders.  To my surprise it is really a good width across the shoulders–maybe a HAIR too wide, but close.  The waist, however is another story.  The finished garment size on the waist in the smallest size is 35″–my waist is 27″–at least when I checked about a month ago.  Even with added ease, that’s too much for my taste.  The hip size is also 38″–that IS my hip, so that wasn’t going to work (I went up two sizes there).

My dilemma is that there’s too much waist–it’s too long for me (if you look closely, you can see I really need to raise the position of the ties), so I folded out what I needed, but then how do you blend it all back together without adding even more at the waist or ending up with weird balooney things around the hips (from the front, it’s hard to see the ballooneys, but from the side–whoo!)?

The dress as it is is wearable, and I’m not blaming the pattern.  There is indeed no gaping, the collar looks awesome, and if a stiff breeze comes on by, you will absolutely not lose anything.  The pattern is extremely well written and it’s simple enough to do.  If you’re more of an H-shaped figure than an X who’s just slighlty A shaped like me, this is probably the wrap dress for you.

As for me and this pattern, I’m going to take it to my fitting group and try and figure it out.  This is not the first time I’ve had issues with princess seams and my short little waist and bigger hips.  I’m not going to review this pattern formally until I’ve figured it out because I want to be fair and because I do believe it’s a good pattern despite my current issues with it.