Lady Skater 3 Part Series- The Best Part

This week, I've shown you my wild side in a 3 quarter length shirt and my softer side in a full length shirt.

Today, I'm showing you my new favorite modification.

I love the Lady Skater dress and have made a couple.

Then I merged  kitchsycoo 's Lady Skater top with the Comino Cap and created a t-shirt that I love.

Since that was so easy, I thought my  next task would be a breeze.  I wanted to make a dress along the lines of the dress my sister (callajaire) made for beanster that you can see in her post here.  I love the way that dress flows and doesn't have a sew waist.

She drafts and redesigns patterns all the time, so she said I could probably just take the Lady Skater and put the skirt and top together and lengthen it as far as I want it to go.  Just follow the lines, she said.

It made so much sense.  I knew exactly what I was going to do.  And I was tickled that I had some heavy duty wrapping paper that was on a roll and would be perfect to get one, long front and back pattern.  Then I'd just use the regular sleeve and neckline pieces from the Lady Skater.

So, off I went to get my fabric and came home to "draft" my new pattern.  I had been thinking about it for days.

And this is what happened.  I put the top and bottom together and then lengthened them to the length I thought I wanted.  48 inches from the shoulder to the bottom of the skirt which would let me have a 2 inch hem.

And then I got to looking at it and thought "there is no way I am that skinny right before the top of my hips. Olive Oyle, I am not.  But I went along with it anyway and cut out my fabric and sewed it all up.

And tried it on and trust me, there was no need for a picture.  It was awful.  So snug in the hips and the flare of the skirt started way down at the bottom of my knee.  Not what I had in my at all.  I really am NOT that skinny at the top of my hips!  This drafting this is for the birds.

But, instead of throwing it out, I finished the sleeves and then left it for the night and planned to hem it in the morning and give it away.

I know someone who is very skinny and straight through the hips and she's short so the length would work.  But how could I tell her I'd made it and would like to give it to her without making her think I'm stalking her and secretly making her clothes.  Creepy.

And then it hit me.  I knew EXACTLY what I had done wrong and EXACTLY how to fix it!

Phew, no need to freak out a coworker with my "I made a dress that's too small for me but would be perfect for you" plan.

So what went wrong, you ask?

Well, instead of doing this:

 And then following the skirt line all the way to where I wanted it to stop, like this:

I broke the top and bottom apart and put all of the length in the middle.   I measured out 48 inches on the table and put the top at the top and the bottom of the skirt at 48 inches and then filled in the paper in between.  I honestly don't know what I was thinking. 

This is where I demonstrate why I am not an engineer.  Can you imagine?

I spent so much time this summer perfecting the length of the torso of the Lady Skater and then completely undid that when I lengthened the mid section like that.

But, it made for a very simple fix.  I simple lined up the top and bottom pieces on the dress and cut the middle piece out.  Then I sewed them together as the pattern requires anyway.

And I have a very fine Lady Skater with the knee length skirt.

But, I still didn't have my magical dress like the one I intentionally planned to make. So, off to the fabric store I went on Black Friday evening.  There was no one there and it didn't appear to have been ransacked during the day, so it was a pleasant trip.  I found an even better knit and it was 60% off, so I was tickled.

I came home and correctly drafted my pattern, the way I originally intended, with the lengthening happening at the bottom, not the middle.  This picture shows the wrapping paper curling up.  It wasn't an asymmetrical pattern!

If you know anything about patterns, I am sure you see the grave error I made on the left side of the pattern.  When I lined up the top and bottom, I didn't line up the edges of the fold lines, so I did this wrong.  I had to take it apart and line them up and finagle the outer edge to suit my fancy.

And suit it did!

It has the lines I was looking for.  And the length is just what I wanted.  The skirt is super full which adds a weight that I like, but it ate up a lot of fabric!

Maybe if I had a little Captain in my, this would have gone smoother!

I do not love the back as much as I want to, but I think it's because I was standing funny.  I hope that's why.

It was loose but hugging in weird places and makes me think it's the swayback that kitschycoo mentions about the Lady Skater.  I'm sure adding length and weight has done something to the lines of the original.

So it's another grey, but darker and with some silvery thread in it.  I'm not sure what I will do with the other grey one.  Anyone want to buy it?  It will fit someone about 5'2"!

I've seen a lot of Lady Skaters on Instagram dressed up with scarves, so I think I will do that with this.

After all my fantasizing about this dress, I look at it now and think I should be floating out on the moors in Scotland a la Wuthering Heights.  Or walking through town in my low heeled boots a la Louisa May Alcott.  A lot of hullabaloo for what?

I used a total of 3 yards, almost to the inch to make this, so unless the fabric is 60% off again, I don't know if I'd make another.  This turned out to be really cheap, but because that skirt takes up so much material, I think it will be a while before I do it again.

Linking here:
http://www.lovebakesgoodcakes.com/2014/12/freedom-fridays-with-all-my-bloggy.html#more