Hey you guys!!  I wrote a blog post last year about some garments I had made with love and care, but they were a disappointment once I wore them.  There were fit, style and sundry issues which made those much-loved clothes stay in the closet.  Go here for the gory details. 

Need fixing, the red jacket just needs a place to go.     

three items, altered and now in frequent wardrobe rotation

I’m happy to inform whoever wants to know, that three out of those five garments are now in frequent wardrobe rotation. The lesson here is, do make changes and alterations to things you love.  Altering is fun, actually. Don’t be afraid of it.

So the pieces which are now actively in rotation my closet are:

The ponte KNIT black jeans:

  

All it needed was a different waistband. The original one was a regular, un-interfaced band with a button; however, it stretched as I wore it and by the end of the day, it would be so loose that the jeans slid down to unacceptable levels.  The only solution was to hack off the old waistband and add an elasticized one; when worn, the waistband lies smoothly on my waist and on the body you can’t tell it’s an elastic waistband. The jeans zipper now remains zipped for eternity, since I can pull up the ponte knit jeans without needing to unzip.

Bahamanian Blue Stretch Cotton pants:

These pants fit beautifully to begin with, and I had made them high waisted, mistakenly thinking they would pull me in like Spanx. Hahaha.  No deal; the fabric stretched out after a couple of hours and the pants would slide down, puddling at the ankles — not pretty.  The solution for this was to make the waist lower, and the pants a bit snugger at the top; they’ll stretch with wear but not so much that they begin to slide down.

The Prudence blouse:

Before:  Nope. Not good at all; looks worse on me.

After: Looks better on me than on the dress form 🙂 

This blouse is a typical story of the home sewer being seduced by the pattern illustration, and the final project turning out extremely unsuitable.  I hated that I wasted pretty fabric, my sewing time and skill to make something that looks better on the dress form than me. That is why there isn’t any image of me in it. I tried it on, and took it off immediately.

This was a piece ripe for refashioning; and refashion it I did.  How?  First, there was the whack job; the elements of the tunic were taken apart. Forget about ladylike seam picking; I took a scissor to the seams and cut it apart.

Then, the pleats from the front and back were released to give me a wider piece to work with. Considering the fact that the front had to go over my womanly curves, I decided to include discreet gathers at the horizontal yoke/bodice seams on the front; and did the same at center back.  Now the tunic hangs much better without the cumbersome pleats.  What about the sleeves?!

I decided to leave them out, used an armhole template from another pattern to shape the armhole,  and finished the edges with a linen bias binding/facing.

Nice summer tunic (or Texas Autumn tunic) to wear with the Bahamanian blue pants.

 

The next item waiting for changes and fixes is a pair of dupionni pants.

Happy National Sewing Month!

Samina