Workroom Session 7: Finishing the pattern

I was a little bit of a slacker and didn't use my 5 hours very effectively today.  However, I did manage to get a few important things accomplished.

First and foremost, I have finished the pattern.  I didn't take a lot of photos along the way as the final stages of drawing the pattern are rather uninteresting.  The one thing that was relatively interesting - measuring the sewn length of the seams to check that the pattern edges would fit together - involves bending a flexible ruler around any curves on the seamline.  It takes both hands, so I wasn't really able to take pictures.

I made a few decisions about the sewing process.  One, the center front will be cut on the fold.  It will have a strip of fabric running down it with THREE bones, applied to the outside of the corset body.  Two, the pieces need to be cut out one layer at a time so that some attention can be given to matching the stripe.  Three, I will be underlining it and am starting to think that I should use coutil for that.  I'm not sure, though - I need to go up to Nancy's and see what the stuff actually looks like.

I also made one more gusset sample.  I'm happy with how it came out, but realize that I am going to need to practice controlling the Mercury a little more before I work on a finished product.  I have just the thing for that.  There are a few exercises in my text from my design school class.  I will go through them; that should be adequate to fine-tune my ability to drive the machine with good results.  I may also need to adjust the machine a bit more, and the only way to know for sure is to experiment a little.  This will be high on my to-do list, as I would like to get the corset constructed by this time next week.

Since I've decided that I will be making a denim skirt and jacket to go with, I went to have a look at yardage for that.  I started at Pacific Fabric's outlet in SoDo.  They had lots of denim flat-folds, but it was all heavyweight.  I need a rather light denim, so that was right out.  I came home via Aurora and popped into the Shoreline Jo-Ann Fabrics.  They had a nice 6 oz indigo denim for a reasonable price.  I went ahead and purchased it, and had a look at patterns for the jacket.  I was sadly dismayed by what the plus-size pattern selection looked like.  I wanted a basic shirt pattern and a basic princess-cut jacket pattern.  I did find a jacket pattern, but no blouse pattern that I was happy with.  (I'm secretly hoping to just buy a top to go under the corset and jacket, but we'll see what I can find.)  The jacket will need to be modified, but that was the plan anyway.