Transitional Sewing

Pattern Review: McCalls 6209

Between the crazy month I had work-wise during March and all of the constant fabric shopping, I had actually been working on some sewing projects. One of them is McCall's 6209. I thought that this would be a great Winter/Spring transitional garment.

So if any of you follow Mimi G's blog, you will know that that this is pretty much a rip off of her fab version. If I had not seen her brilliant fabric choice, there is no way that I would have touched this pattern with a barge pole. I don't know why, but for some reason I found the pattern envelope really unappealing. 

The fabric is a wool and polyester mix that I bought from Toto Fabrics in Poitiers, France whilst visiting my Godmother. I paid €10 for 2 metres - not bad at all. The fabric was a dream to work with and feels lovely when wearing it. In fact it feels like I am wearing a blanket outdoors.

This pattern is supposed to be one of those super quick 1 hour sewing time patterns. This was definitely not a 1 hour sew for me. This was mostly due to my daftness. My first fail was that I lost the neck facing pattern piece. I redrafted one based on the back neckline. However this did not work at all, so I scrapped it and just used bias binding.

My second fail is that I had 2 metres of fabric to cut out a pattern that requires 2.70 metres and pattern matching. I squeezed out the pieces, but I couldn't get them to pattern match during the cutting process. This was no major drama, but did mean that I had to spend a longer than usual on the pinning process to make sure that the front and shoulder seams match. It was worth it though as I managed to shave a bit off of cape (it is seriously long! I took approx 3 inches off) and everything matches which makes me feel jammy. 

Just in case you wondered how it looked 'in action'

I also spent ages scratching my head as my automatic button hole stitch was not long enough to fit the size of the belt. After checking out my options I decided that it was time to learn how to sew a button hole by hand. I was lamenting about this situation at my sewing group, when one of the members suggested sewing a blanket stitch around the button hole instead. I have to say it was a brilliant idea. It was super quick, looks pretty effective (invisible in fact) and got me out of hand stitching buttonholes! As the buttonhole is used for a belt the amount of wear on the hole will be much less than squeezing a button in and out, so should last pretty well. 

I am really glad that this did not end up in the UFO pile, and am equally glad that I used up this lovely fabric that had been languishing in my stash for over a year! 

You can check out my Pattern Review here. 

Do you ever have super simple patterns that seem to cause endless grief? 

And do you power through or do they get banished to the UFOs?

Happy Sewing!