While the boyfriend's away...

the Gabs will.... sew....

The boyfriend had an extra anatomy lab from 6 - 8 pm this evening.

Meaning he was gone from 5:30 - 9 pm.

I got bored after about the first half hour of his absence, considering I had already been at home all day by myself and had pretty much exhausted the tv watching and internet browsing for one day.

I ended up going through the patterns, books, and magazines that I have lying around and found this pattern.

It's the Circle Shirt from One Piece Wearables by Sheila Brennan.

This shirt was a series of triumphs and horribly embarrassing mistakes.

The fact that I finished it is a triumph in and of itself, considering how many road bumps I faced along the way.

You start by folding your fabric in half and then in half again.

I am apparently an idiot and instead of having the left and bottom edges be folded, I only had the left edge folded.

Because of this, I ended up having to sew a seam down the front and back of the shirt in order to continue with the pattern.

Then, as you can tell from my pinning, I ended up sewing the side seams and going all the way up and sewing the future sleeves closed.

In order to back-track, I cut along the seam to make new, smaller sleeves.

In the process of doing that, I cut down too far and the new sleeves came down so far that the side of my bra was visible.

Back to the sewing machine to sew the side seams higher.

Then the tedious work of hemming the collar and bottom.

I gave up after that and decided to leave the sleeves unfinished, seeing as it's knit jersey and doesn't look completely terrible if left unhemmed.

The final product was not totally disastrous, especially considering I also had to deal with Jaks rolling all over the fabric every chance he got and shedding ridiculous amounts of fur.

The instructions for this top didn't actually come with a pattern, and trying to draw all the lines directly on the knit jersey was fucking insane. It's like it's completely impervious to dressmaker's pencil. Black magic.

I think I'll probably try to make this shirt again so that I can have a version sans ugly seam down the front and back.

For now, I'll just pretend that it looks industrial and 'deconstructed' and hope that other people think the same, rather than seeing the truth - it's a shoddy, unfinished shirt...

But for my first try at garment making in at least 5 years, and considering I haven't successfully finished a piece of clothing since middle school, I would say that this is a pretty good specimen.

Keep crafting,

Gabriella