{"id":2796,"date":"2011-01-20T07:06:18","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T20:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/?p=2796"},"modified":"2011-01-21T07:27:12","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T20:27:12","slug":"red-tucks-and-darts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/2011\/01\/20\/red-tucks-and-darts\/","title":{"rendered":"red tucks and darts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I dreamt about red tucks and darts last night, which might tell you what I was doing yesterday. I completed the cute little pink leotard for my niece and was able to make a start on creating my Butterick B5559 red dress<\/a>. WITH sleeves – thanks to all who voted on the sleeves or not sleeves question. I could have happily had it with or without, but the majority voted for sleeves, so I’ll go with that.<\/p>\n

After reading several accounts of making 5559 on blogs, such as Sew Silly<\/a> and Life Happens Be Positive<\/a>, I was a bit daunted about transferring all the tucks and darts to the fabric. However, I appreciated their honesty about the pitfalls of this pattern, which is why I am adding to the general knowledge about making this pattern by adding my comments and the process I used in this blog posting. Hopefully my tips and tricks might help someone else too!<\/p>\n

I figured that I needed the foldlines for the tucks on the front of the fabric (and therefore non-permanent marking lines) and the darts on the back. So firstly I traced each pattern piece onto butchers paper so that I didn’t destroy my pattern with whatever method I eventually chose. I then used these to cut out the pattern pieces and left them in place for the transferring of all the important lines.<\/p>\n

For the darts and tucks I considered using tailor’s chalk, but the only one I have makes very faint useless lines, and rubs the fabric in the process, so that was deemed unacceptable. I considered using water-soluble fabric markers, but they would mean that I could not iron the fabric before it had been washed out. I tried out the tailor’s tack function on my sewing machine, but it was going to give me a zigzagging line, which wasn’t accurate enough in my mind. I was thinking it was going to be a case of hand running stitching along each of the foldlines, when I realised that I could use a very long basting stitch on my sewing machine and simply sew along the foldlines marked on my butchers paper pattern. Yay! That would save hours.<\/p>\n

So I did this and then realised that it was going to create a new problem. You see, because the fabric is a knit, I need to stretch it when sewing, so that it retains its stretch, even along the seams. But if I had a line of non-stretchy basting, it would stop me from doing that. Hmm…
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\"Butterick<\/a>

Machine basted foldlines on bodice back<\/p><\/div>
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\"Butterick<\/a>

Machine basted foldlines and hand tailor tacked darts on skirt back<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

While solving this, I tailor tacked all the dart points by hand. That was easy enough, and not overly daunting. I did it at the dinner table while my children were finishing their dinner. I ripped away the paper, which is pretty easy with butchers paper as its only a low grade paper, leaving the basted foldlines and dart markings.
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\"Butterick<\/a>

Ripping away the butchers paper pattern<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

\"Butterick<\/a>

The snipped machine basting<\/p><\/div>My eureka moment was when I realised that if I carefully snipped between every second basting stitch (front and back), the basting should stay long enough for me to stitch, while still allowing me to stretch as I sewed. And it worked! It did mean that I had heaps of short bits of thread that had to be removed once the tuck was sewn, but that’s a small price to pay for saving hours of hand tacking time! When I make this pattern again (and I will!) I’ll use the special basting stitch on my machine that makes the basting twice as long again.<\/p>\n

So instead of taking days to mark up all the pattern pieces, which is what I was expecting, it took only about two hours, including the tracing time for making my butchers paper patterns. And then I was able to start sewing. I’ve done the front, and today I should be able to get it finished. I’m loving sewing the ponti. It is firm and stable and lovely to work with.<\/p>\n

And yesterday I realised that there will be an excellent opportunity to wear the dress in the near future. Each year, my husband’s school starts the year with a cocktail party. One red party dress coming right up! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Added later:<\/strong> You can see the finished dress here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I dreamt about red tucks and darts last night, which might tell you what I was doing yesterday. I completed the cute little pink leotard for my niece and was able to make a start on creating my Butterick B5559 red dress. WITH sleeves – thanks to all who voted on the sleeves or not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-making-stuff","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2796"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2820,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2796\/revisions\/2820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vettycreations.com.au\/white-threads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}