I have sewn a couple garments in the last month, both for Garment Designer software challenges. The first one was the Ruffle Challenge. The challenge was to create a pattern in Garment Designer that used the Ruffle feature. Garment Designer software will quickly create the pattern for a circular ruffle for a hem length, to a user specified width and flare. In my inspiration file, there were three versions of garments that had a ruffle starting in a front yoke and spiraling down the sleeve. That was the pattern I chose to make.
I drafted the blouse pattern in Garment Designer and manipulated the sleeve hem to be a diagonal seam from armhole to hem in order to generated the ruffle pattern of the correct length. To keep the blouse from being too frou frou, I made it from a pink cotton chambray fabric. It looks good with blue or white jeans.
The next challenge was the Creativity with Stripes Challenge, I am ineligible to win any other challenges this year, but I can still participate. I had a lot of weird shaped scraps of black and white stripe cotton lycra fabric left over from the body suit I made back in Jan 2019.
I threw half of them in an apple green Rit Dye bath. I drafted a basic T shirt pattern in Garment Designer (replicated a favorite Burda T Shirt) and did some create piecing with the green and black stripe fabric. My mother called the result a "shadow effect".
The back was looking a bit boring with black and white stripes and one green sleeve. So I pieced the letters "Au", which are the first two letters of my name and the Periodic Table abbreviation for gold, on the back.
To wear with my rather different T shirt, I decided I needed a different pair of pants. I collected up all the pants patterns I have with the popular Art to Wear "lantern" shaped leg. Patterns like the Trio pants from Sewing Workshop, Vogue - both Sandra Betzina 1355 and Marcy Tilton 9035, and The Cutting Line - Discover Something Novel pants
From these patterns I chose the Tilton Vogue 9035. Because it was the only one with a fitted waist. All the other patterns had elastic waists.
Gathered fabric filling in what little waist indentation I have makes me look block shaped. I avoid gathered waist garments. Of course I didn't think it through and realize that a fitted waist meant basting and fitting and resewing. Sigh. Not a fast sew, but it did result in a a cute pair of pants. Fabric is machine washed, lightweight, wool gabardine that has been topstitched using beige thread.
