Hard at work

The last few days have been more or  less dedicated to unpacking, with the result that the bedroom, dining room, and kitchen are mostly done.  We can eat, sleep, and wear clothes again.  🙂  The living room is still packed full of boxes (mostly books) but the really essential stuff is all there.  And I found my pair of “good”scissors, so my (craft) life is complete again.

I also spent some time today organizing my sewing table, courtesy of a 2′ x 4′ piece of pegboard that I drilled holes for and laboriously mounted to the wall this morning.  All my sewing tools (and spools of thread) are now hanging neatly from hooks or baskets mounted to the pegboard, within arm’s reach.  Finally, I can get back to work!

Which, of course, means more muslins.  🙂  I drafted a new pattern with the shoulder brought forward by 3/4″, which turned out to be just about right.  I also dropped the shoulder by about 5/8″, because I have sloping shoulders.  This got the shoulder area more or less right, except that the seam ends just at my shoulder bone.  This would be fine in a blouse, but for a coat that’s going on over other things, I think I want to extend it by another 1/2”.  So I’ve added that to the pattern.

I am now puzzling over how to add the dart.  It definitely needs a dart – it’s pulling  up in the front – but I’m not sure  how to add one without disrupting the grainline.  I have instructions for making darts larger or smaller, but they also seem to make the center front wider, and I don’t think I need that – I just need to tuck the excess fabric up.  I was poring over a couple of books on fitting tonight, trying to understand how this all works, but didn’t really arrive at an understanding – just a set of instructions that might or might not be appropriate.  So tomorrow when I wake up I will try again.  I have at least five or six books on pattern drafting and alteration, and by reading through several of them, and trying very hard to think about what is happening, I think I can figure this out.

Of course, if you know the quick answer to what I’m trying to do, by all means enlighten me.  🙂

I’ll leave you with an absolutely beautiful (to me, anyway) photo of my new sewing table, with the pattern-in-process on it.  It’s such a luxury to have an entire table to work on, with good lighting and all my tools at hand!  A far cry from the Bad Old Days when I was trying to lay everything out on half of the dining room table (or, worse yet, on the floor!).

Anyway, it shows my organizing scheme.  I’m pretty happy with the pegboard.  I had been racking my brains trying to figure out how to store everything in boxes so it would be accessible – this is great.

Back to work!