Well Friends & Neighbors, I am extremely frustrated. I made the muslin for the graduation dress, and finished it today. It was awful. Not just sort of not good, but awful. Apparently I am no good at grading. The shoulders extended three inches beyond the movement point of my shoulder, the bodice was about 6 inches too wide at the underarms, and the boob pleats gave it waaaay too much ease.

So very frustrating. I wasn’t going to blog about it, but I think its important to share our struggles and not just our successes. Otherwise, I think the sewing blogosphere can come off as a bit too perfect.

I ripped it apart before I took any pictures, so there is no evidence of my failing. Sorry. Since that is the case, I am going to show you some VERY random pictures. Some are old, some are new. None are borrowed or blue though, so don’t worry about that.

Also, if you’d like to read a slice of the stories associated with these pictures, head on over to the Flickr photostream. They will still appear to be equally as random, but hey, they might make ya giggle.

What is my solution with graduation looming in a mere 3 days?

I don’t know.

Plan A – trace off whatever the largest size of bodice was Burda offered, and compare it to where mine had too much ease. Maybe that will provide some help, and I can just sew it up.

Plan B – Version 2 of the Jamie Dress from Sis Boom Patterns. Did I ever mention that I finished my muslin of that? And hated it? And promptly threw my hands in the air and threw the muslin in a pile on the floor? It was supposed to be an Easter dress. Now its June. But I eventually picked it back up, and determined where I needed to add and where I needed to take away. The good thing about that dress is that it cut out very quickly, and didn’t take a super long time to sew up.

Plan C – dig out the pattern from a dress I made last summer that I know fits me, and use it.

Sigh. In three days?! While I’m trying to pack all my earthly belongings and buy a house?!

Oh goodness.

As you may have noticed, today is the beginning of June. As I have yet to actually get dressed and put on “real” clothes, I will be wearing something of mine in an hour when we go inspect The House.

Yes, we are so enamored with it that I will, from here on out, refer to it as The House with capital letters.

But back to clothes. So I will post tomorrow what I wore today, or this afternoon. Whatever. Yay Me Made June!

Oh. And did I mention my sewing machine is on the fritz?

Awesome.