In light of my 2012 recap post, I decided to step back and take inventory of all of the projects that I started in 2012 or *shudder* earlier.
It was fun to go through all of the garments I made last year but it was not so much fun to realize that I could have more completed projects had I not started so many others (which were also never completed). Yarrrr I seem to have sewing/knitting A.D.D. and I’m resolving to finish as many as I can before the ADD kicks in once again. :)
So… I’ve decided to air my dirty laundry in hopes that this public shaming helps keep me on task to completing them. heh
These are the projects in my apartment that are in various states of incompleteness (from most recent to older).
White Linen Skirt/Simplicity 3673:
Same as the image below… just white.
This skirt has a really funny story to it… In my haste before departing on the cruise, I really wanted to wear my grandmother’s navy linen jacket for the first day on board the ship. It would have been lovely, but I was lacking a decent fitting skirt to wear with it. So at 5pm, the day before boarding the plane for Florida, I decided it would be the perfect time to start making a skirt. I could finish it and hem it on the plane. Well…. I got really far in 2 hours’ time but seeing as how it was 7pm and I hadn’t started packing yet I had to stop working on said skirt.
I ended up being awake until 3am packing and such, slept for 3 hours and left for the airport. So… as you can imagine my crazy, last minute, hair-brained scheme to finish this skirt was left on my sewing table unfinished. My poor husband, Felix, knew the entire time how crazy I was but he never chided me for sewing instead of packing. He must love me lots. :)
Striped Linen Skirt/Simplicity 3673:
Another skirt I made for the cruise has remained unfinished. I actually intended to wear this skirt with my grandmother’s navy linen jacket but it looked *off* and I only realized until after I stitched it all up. So I decided to leave it behind from the cruise and it’s nearly finished; the only thing it needs is to be hemmed.
Butterick 5824 aka The Gertie Coat:
I stopped working on this coat in order to focus on sewing my cruise wardrobe. It was the right decision at the time, but seeing as how I got sick and wasn’t able to get any more sewing done like I had planned… I could have just stuck with the coat and had it completed instead. Ahh well… Truth be told, this is one project that doesn’t make me feel guilty since I feel that I made the correct decision to put this on pause.
Butterfly Dress or McCalls 4003:
This dress got soo close to being completed. I stopped working on this dress since after I tried it on the waist of the skirt ended up being too large for me. What I’ve been finding is that I actually like my full-skirted cotton dresses to have a tiny bit of negative ease in the waist. I had made this skirt true to my actual waist measurement and after sewing it to the bodice it felt large and droopy.
After stitching all the pleats, serging the waistline seam, and adding an inner waist-stay I found no energy left to unpick the entire thing to make it smaller. But thinking about it now… I realize that all I have to do to make this dress work is to unpick the waist stay ONLY and it will be fine. Since I have made a coordinating belt, this will act as the waist stay and I can cinch it as tight as I need to and it will still look fine.
So this dress needs a hemming, I have to finish the buttonholes and buttons, finish the side-seam zipper, and stitch on the sleeve facings. A decent amount of work, but not that bad…
Vogue 7924 Dress:
Again, this is another dress that I got quite close to finishing. I made this around the same time as the butterfly dress (above) and I have the same issue with it: the waist is a tad to large for me. This skirt is a drindle-style so in order for me to fix it I have to unpick the waist-stay, unpick the serging and gather the skirt a bit tighter as well as increase the side-seams of the bodices to make it a tad more fitted. And true to form, it also needs to be hemmed.
And as with the other dress, I think I’m just going to try and see if cinching the waist more with a belt will be a better quick fix for this dress.
*I’m now thinking… what’s the deal with all of my bodices being too large for me?!* I don’t think I shrunk all that much between then and now. *hrumph*
Accessory for your Spring Suit Jumper:
I got quite close to finishing this jumper, but was drawn in by my bobble jumper instead (which is actually coming along swimmingly!) After taking this image, I kept working on this jumper and have the second sleeve nearly completed. I decided that I would need to remake the neck tie and block this sweater before continuing work on it. So I happened to cast on for my green bobble jumper in the meantime and I somehow never got back around to blocking this jumper to do the rest of the work on it.
So after I complete my green bobble jumper, I’ll be picking this one up again to complete it. I just don’t see the sense of stopping work on the green jumper when I’m also so close to finishing it also.
Aqua Waves Jumper:
I continue to love this jumper and have started and stopped many times since I first cast it on. I keep having trouble with the sleeves. I’ve worked them a few different ways already and haven’t been terribly happy with them. The first time I believe I picked up too many stitches and the ribbing of the sleeves looked really bad. So I frogged the sleeves and started over using short rows to make sleeve caps but that doesn’t look good either.
What I now have to do is frog the sleeve caps and will try to use those stitches as new ribbed sleeves and I hope that will work. This one has taken a lot of trial and error and I hope I can work out the details by springtime.
Sun Ray Ribbed Jumper:
I started this jumper last January/February of 2012, but got confused by it’s directions that I stopped so it’s been hibernating since. I intend to start this one again sometime later in the year after I finish some of these other knitting projects.
Basque Cardigan:
I’m not sure if you recall this knit, but I started it some time ago. I had completed the entire back bodice and had been working on the front when I realized that it seemed to be too long for me (or ill proportioned or something). It just didn’t look quite right to me at the time I was working on it so I put it on a pause. This one is also hibernating in my closet and I intend to get back to it once I finish some other of my knitting projects. Not a terribly high priority… but another project that is still on my to-do list.
Cropped, Swing Jacket:
I started this jacket quite a while ago and I seemed to have let it sit due to the fact that I’m not terribly sure if the style suits my fancy anymore.
I hand stitched in the lining, but I would like to redo it since I built in too much ease when the jacket isn’t as fitted. After that all it needs is the final construction and the white border to the sleeves and hem to be completed. But…. I’ll need to re-evaluate this knit to determine if actually want to finish it or not. (Again, not high on my to-do list.)
Simplicity 3313 Jumper:
I posted about this failed jumper in my Learning From Mistakes post. It never got a proper blog post, but this is a project I think is officially a failure. I intended to unpick the bodice from the skirt and just use what I have as a skirt, but after trying it on… I think I’ll be donating this instead.
In order for the skirt to fit and drape how I imagine in my head, I’d have to line the entire thing in horsehair canvas for it to be a lovely full skirt. Plus I think the fabric is just too thick for a garment (non-coat) and fear it would never look nice. So at this point, I don’t think it’s worth it, but I’ll keep it around for a while longer to see if I change my mind.
Dubarry 1884B Skirt:
I don’t believe this skirt ever made it to the blog… it was one of my first vintage skirts I attempted. It’s a lovely 30’s or 40’s wool skirt with 8 gores. And after trying it on, I quickly learnt that these gored skirts are not friends with pear-shaped gals such as myself. At the time I had no idea how to change the design to fit my hips, so it has been sitting in my closet ever since.
I now know I would just need to reduce the width of the skirt at the hem to change the silhouette, I just never got around to it. So I’ll finish it one of these days… or so I keep telling myself.
And last but not least is my….
Macaron Redux Dress:
I think only my really early blog readers will remember this bodice! This dress will be a masterpiece if I ever manage to complete it. I don’t recall why I stopped working on this dress, but it deserves to be completed, even if it doesn’t fit me in the end. heh
It has appliqued seams & appliqued darts with the lace, and I’ve been using all couture sewing techniques on it…learning as I went. I think I’ll pick it up again when I finish some of my other sewing projects…
To Recap:
Whew… that was a lot. To recap, it seems I have 8 sewing projects and 5 knitting projects to complete. I generally don’t work on more than one knitting project at a time, so once I finish one garment I’ll be able to move on to the next.
As with the sewing projects…. I’m really at a loss as to what I should start with first. I think the Dubarry 1884B or either of the linen skirts would be the easiest and take the least amount of time to complete, which may be the correct way to go since my goal is completions. It’s just that it would be nice to have the Gertie coat completed this winter so I could get a bit of use out of it.
I’m going to have to sit down and ponder what I have the *drive* to sew next. I still want to have fun with my sewing projects even though they’ve been sitting for so long so it’s going to take some motivation and mental “pumping-up” so I can be psyched to complete this stuff. Wish me luck! :)
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