Monday, August 12, 2013

Toxic Relationships

Have you ever found yourself in a painful relationship? One that you really want to work, but becomes detrimental to living a productive life? Maybe it causes you to question your abilities, or perhaps lose confidence in yourself altogether?  Maybe you even have a poor body image because of it?  No matter what you do, how hard you try, you don't think you can ever work things out?  No, I'm not airing my dirty laundry, this blog is still about sewing...this is where I found myself with Vogue 8766 late last week.
Vogue 8766, View E.

Now that my tweed jacket is finished, I don't have any UFOs and I'm not one to throw in the towel, especially with an "easy" pattern.  Especially not one that was reviewed so well by so many people all over the internet.  But I just could not fit the muslin to look flattering on me.  The darts didn't work on me, my back appeared as if I had an extreme case of scoliosis, and if that wasn't enough, the waistline appeared to be the same circumference as the bust and hips. A sack of potatoes may have looked better.  Moving the darts didn't help, making them larger didn't help, everything I did seemed to make it look worse.

Starting from scratch with muslin #2 would surely make a difference...NOT!  I went to bed on Thursday night wishing that I could just have a good cry and feel better.  My confidence was completely shot -- I kept telling myself: "You have sewn Advanced Vogue patterns without a muslin that came out lovely, and this is an EASY pattern."  "It can't be THAT hard."  "You are a nice person, and people like you." Well, not the last sentence, but I probably should have tried it.

Friday afternoon I decided that I just could not -- would not -- work with THAT pattern.  Actually, the skirt was okay, it was just the bodice that looked awful.  I toyed with starting over with a new pattern, but decided that the answer was to re-draft the bodice with princess seams that are (hopefully) easier to fit.

Saturday morning, I broke out my "Perfect Fitting" book by Sarah Veblen.  Finally, on Sunday night, I accepted my fourth muslin as the final and declared that I would move forward with that version.  I still don't love it, but I'm running out of time.  I know it sounds like a marriage of convenience.

If I didn't have a hard deadline of a week from yesterday, I would definitely have started over -- new pattern, new fabric, new attitude -- but it must be finished by this Sunday, before I leave for a week long business trip.  AND I still have to dye the fabric.  [That will be another can of worms all by itself.]

I still haven't figured out why this was such a difficult chore to fit this for myself.  Is it because I bought a smaller size and tried to increase the waist (by the way, I ended up taking more than half the increased circumference out of the final version and I still have room to move), or is it just that this style does not work for my body type?

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