learning curve

Ah, inspiration. At what point does it turn into obsession? I appear to be on my way to finding out. As soon as I saw this Alma Aguilar dress I became, shall we say, completely preoccupied with recreating the bodice. I think it is just beautiful, not so taken with the skirt shape but I'm busy with blouses at the moment so that's ok (a dress is in the planning stage but that will be later, much later).

So I have been busy sewing and busy learning, mostly about how to sew a curve. It's hard work. The issue with sewing a curved seam (as in the seam between the yoke and bodice at left) is that the seam line (where you sew) is the same length on both pieces but, given the seam allowance, the edges of the pieces are different lengths. They are also different shapes.(You can get a bit of an idea from this Collette sew-along tutorial.)

My original pattern (McCall's 2818) had no such curved seam issues but I had to go and modify it, twice over, in an attempt to mimic the bodice of my inspira... obsessi... preoccupation. There was much clipping and notching and pinning and stitching and puckering and undoing and restitching and ... I'll show you the results next time.

(image credit)