When life gives you lemons

This dress was NOT supposed to happen. You're probably scratching your heads and wondering "where's the dress??" Yeah, this used to be a dress until I hacked it into a maxi skirt. I'm one of those people that insist on completing a garment no matter what. It could be my frugal side that doesn't like wasting money or time, or it could be the competitive side that doesn't want a project to get the best of me. Whatever the reason, I made a dress despite everything in the universe working against me and have ended up with a maxi skirt that I like when paired with my Salme Kimono top.


Let's go over the problems I encountered while making this maxi skirt.

Problem 1: Flawed fabric
During the LA Blogger Meetup I was drawn to this pretty purple fabric from The Fabric Store. It was soft, 90% cotton, 10% wool, and from Japan (which made it instantly cooler in my eyes ;) ). When the girl at the counter was cutting the two yards necessary for the Style Arc Jacinta Dress I noticed that there was a huge hole. I'm not talking a dime sized hole, I'm talking a hole so big that I could dive through it into a pool. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but it was the biggest hole I have seen on a bolt of fabric. She cut off the flawed part, gave it to me for free, and then cut me a fresh two yards. Except, neither of us caught that the new piece had a huge hole in it too. Nooooooo!!!!

Problem 2: Failure to understand pattern pieces
There are only two versions for the Jacinta Dress, sleeveless and sleeves. Well, I mistook the pattern pieces marked with an "SL" to be for the version for sleeves. That was a dumb dumb move because apparently "SL" means sleeveless. It was annoying to have to recut fabric halfway into my project. And it was extra annoying when I cut the fabric on the wrong side which was slightly darker than the right side. And it was even more annoying that I didn't realize it until after I had sewn everything together. This little nightmare had me wishing for Sewaholic's organization when it comes to clearly noting which pattern pieces go with which version.


Problem 3: Blown out neckline
Totally spaced on applying stay tape to the neckline and it completely stretched out.

Problem 4: Broken serger and a sewing machine that needed to be serviced
While sewing the center back seam I noticed the tension on my serger was way off. I literally spent hours trying to change the dials and settings to make it work. I referenced my Colette Patterns Guide to Sewing Knits, looked at videos online, and lurked around on blogs. None of the suggestions worked, so I figured that I could finish everything on my sewing machine. The tension was off on it too! This wasn't a surprise to me, since I had not had it serviced since I originally bought it. It's just a bummer when you are on a mission to sew and you can't!


Problem 5: It didn't work
Once the sewing machine was returned to me I finished the dress and realized that it just didn't work. The neckline was way too big, the waist was a tiny bit too small, and the purple was just so blah for this particular dress.

As you can see, after all that time and hassle I ended up with a maxi skirt that I could have made in an hour or so haha. I'm just glad that I could make it work and end up with something wearable. Sometimes you just need to get out the scissors, throw in an elastic waistband, call it a day, and go out for sushi with your friends.