Banded Surplice Neckline Tutorial

The banded surplice neckline tutorial for the HP Cosmopolitan Dress is up at The Sewing Divas! Here’s the LINK.

Hot Patterns Sunshine Tops - Part 3

Well, my plan to move some of the gathers further up over the bust didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. You can see from the Very Bad Bathroom Mirror Photo (I’m sorry, I know it’s blurry) that it causes weird wrinkles/folds above the bust. I should have been able to anticipate that. Plan B: I’ve marked a new gathering area on the neckband and will need to rotate the FBA to a vertical dart and rotate that out at the side seam. I really want to get this just right because I know I will be making this top again and again - it’s really pretty.

Another New Dress - Part 2

As you can see, work on the dress hasn’t come very far. I’ve had a busy work week with very little time to sew. I didn’t make much progress on Memorial Day either! However, I am determined to finish it up this weekend as I’m feeling guilty about the many UFOs in my sewing room. Yet, I just keep starting new projects because that’s more fun than trying to remember where I was on a project I stopped 6 months ago, sigh. Must. Get. Organized!

Anyway, I wanted to take advantage of the coordinating fabrics I chose for the project. Yet, I didn’t want to give the dress too much of a bohemian look with lots of pattern blocking. Instead of using the contrast for the midriff inset I decided to use 1/8″ uncorded piping in the seam instead. I think it’s a very nice, subtle detail, don’t you? I’m still on the fence about the hem bands. I have cut them out of the main fabric with the intention of simply piping the seam but now I’m wondering if I should use the contrast fabric instead? Decisions, decisions. I might have to try both before I make a commitment.

In this second photo you can just barely see the buttonloops I added at the center front. I have some lovely vintage pearl buttons that will be added shortly.

Neck Sizes

When I taught shirt-making I was often asked how to change the neck size of a pattern - usually how to increase the size. We are so used to simply adding on to a pattern in order to grade it up yet that is exactly the opposite of what must be done to increase the neck size. If you were to simply add on to the neck edge it would become smaller as you can see from the pattern here. In order to increase the neck size you must make the opening larger by removing material. Little or nothing is removed at the back neck edge as neck size does not increase in that area. Of course, the easiest thing to do is buy a pattern that has cutting lines for various neck sizes like Kwik-Sew 2777 that is shown here. However, that doesn’t always fit in with our plans, does it? If you make a lot of shirts you can cheat a bit by making templates from a pattern such as this. It works and it’s easy to do.

Once you’ve made the neck opening larger you will need to increase the length of the stand and collar. I like to walk the neck edge along the stand to see how much extra length I’ll need. On my son’s shirt I needed an extra 2″ so I slashed the stand in four places and added 1/2″ at each slash. I knew I’d need 2″ in the collar as well but I walked the collar along the stand just to be sure. A typical shirt collar runs from center front to center front but you’ll want to check your pattern in case it’s different from the norm.