Since I got a head start during the 10 hour sewathon back in November I thought I would be able to easily meet the 15 December deadline for Pattern Review’s color block contest. But boy was I wrong! This project turned out be a real time sucker for a multitude of reasons. Firstly I did several silly mistakes while sewing, which meant that I almost spent as much time ripping apart seams and recutting pattern pieces as I spent sewing them together. I think the main reason for this is that I’ve been under a lot of work stress lately – this fall has been really intense with so many different projects to balance. And I think this has stress made me more absent minded. Luckily the worst of it has passed now and I also have plenty of days off during the holiday season.
Another hurdle was that I ended up having to rethink a few of the sewing methods I had planned. For instance I redid the whole front bodice since a waist seam that runs across the whole front didn’t look good. Thankfully I managed to attach the half circles without needing a full waist seam, I just wished I had realized that before I made my first attempt making the bodice. Oh well, luckily I had plenty of extra fabric.
Long story short I spent the deadline night sewing a good portion of this workout set and then had my daughter take the photos right before her bedtime. Not the kind of modus operandi that I normally prefer.
Those struggles aside I am really pleased with how closely I managed to replicate the original sketch. And in the process I learned a lot of new techniques both when it comes to sewing and pattern making.
For how I made the back straps see my criss cross straps tutorial. I will talk about my shorts in a separate post. You can see my review and the other entries in the color block competition (there are around 50 entries in total!) over Pattern Review.
