Before I get to my post topic, I wanted to say thank you for all the love regarding my Zen quilt project. You guys are the greatest! Mmmmmwaaaahh!

And Anne guessed the secret message right off — it’s “Leap and the net will appear,” an old Zen saying. Way to go Anne!

One of the first sewing books I ever bought was Simple Sewing with a French Twist. It was the first time I had ever seen a sewing book that was beautiful and inspiring instead of dull and dry. I’ve been making an effort lately to try out more of the projects in the books that I own, so I finally made the sweet chemise from this book, which I’d had my eye on for a long time. Before wasting using any of my good fabric, I did a muslin out of some cheap stuff I had lying around. I AM SO GLAD I DID!

Just so you know: 1) I did the French seams, except I didn’t trim them before doing the second seam, so the frayed edges are showing on the outside. Please ignore. 2) I didn’t even consider hemming any of these. 3) I obviously am incapable of tying the shoulder straps at the same length. Clearly my own personal deficiency and not the pattern’s.

Here’s how it looked straight off the pattern.



I want to stop here and say…I thought this was going to be a top. Sue me for not knowing what a chemise was and relying on the book photos and illustrations, none of which indicated how long this really was going to be.

If you want to consider making something out of this book that requires one of the patterns in the back, here’s a warning for you: the patterns don’t really enlarge right. I scanned these into my computer, imported them into Illustrator (where they came in at their actual size), and then enlarged them as directed in the book. In Illustrator you can tell it exactly 640% or whatever this required (it was literally something like that). Even though the front and back pieces were in the same image and enlarged the same amount, when I printed them out, one of them was an inch longer than the other where the side seams were supposed to line up. The facing pieces had to be enlarged a different amount, and when enlarged, did not fit the front and back pieces. Just a word of warning to you.

Anyhow, I didn’t want a dress nightgown, I wanted a top, so I tried just cutting it off.



No dice. This was not something I was going to wear outside (even after enlarging the too-tight bust — this is a one-size pattern and I wear a size 2 off the rack, so let that be a warning to you as well!).

My last thought was elastic thread — maybe some shirring could save it? I tested out with just one row around the bottom (since that’s all that was left in that bobbin).



Perhaps marginally better, but no dice. Oh, and sorry about that pissed off look on my face. At this point I may not yet have recovered from only recently having figured out what a “chemise” is.

That’s it for this one. I won’t be designating any good fabric for this project. I guess they can’t all be victories!

On a happier note, I will be teaching my first sewing lesson on Sunday to two sisters who have never used a sewing machine. Should be barrels of fun (seriously!)