Side tracked

by

Just so you know, my background music today is ‘Learn Spanish in Your Car’. I’m going back to Panama in August and the Patrones have put me in a Spanish speaking state of mind!

I never cease to be amazed by the kindness and generosity of others in the online sewing community. I must give a huge thanks to Claire who saw that those were buttons, not studs on the side of the skirt. And, really, I Y Lisette and Paco who told me that the ‘presillas lado’ that I didn’t recognize or find in the dictionary were in fact button loops.

Lisette even went so far as to translate the directions for me when I emailed her to double check the waistband construction order. Huge help. It putzed around with this for HOURS yesterday trying to get it to work. Funky looking, right? Turns out I traced the pieces wrong.

Ahhh. The good thing is re-cutting gave me the idea to change the grain direction for interest and add a few cm since the first one was a tad small.

But, I’m back on track this morning. Except. I just need to add 2 cm, so smaller seam allowances on each side. So, smaller seam allowances. Why is it small? Because I thought it was more economical to buy two 5 pound bags of Gummi Peaches and Gummi Cherries last week. I have to get these out of my house.


Something to note about Patrones that is different than BWOF. First, they just give you the general pattern outline in their layout. Second, they don’t always lay out the pattern pieces in a way to show where each connects. Third, in the layout / line drawing they DO NOT NOTE seam points like A, B, C, D (or 1, 2, 3, 4 in BWOF). Which means you must me super vigilante on checking the pattern for markings because you can’t double check it against the magazine drawing to see if you missed any points. Ask me how I know.

The pink line is my grading up to 42

I also find myself laying out the entire pattern before sewing to make sense of it.
In between all this, I helped my friend Jon finish his wife’s 2007 birthday gift. You may recall he came over last September to start it.


He’s so proud of himself.

Look at this neat trick I picked up from Sherril Miller. She traces the line drawing onto her pattern. I did it for the skirt since there were so many panels. It makes it way easier to see what you’re doing. Plus, it’s really cute.