Crescent Skirt Oops!

Don’t you wish that we could switch week days and weekends so we could only work for two days and then have off for five?  I think that is the only solution to accomplishing everything that I want to do during my non-work time.

Between playing with our new cameras and Mother’s Day festivities, I again had only a little time to sew this weekend.  I decided to work on my Crescent skirt since I’m way behind on the sew along.  Check out my sweet set up.  For the Pendrell sew along, I had printed out all of the instructions since I didn’t take part until after it was over.  This time around I set up my netbook on the table with Pippi.  This worked out great!

I decided to make a full muslin of the skirt before I cut into my more expensive Anna Maria Horner fabric.  I liked making a full muslin of my Runabout Jacket because it’s like a test run of the pattern.  I can make all of the stupid mistakes and work on the fitting issues on cheap fabric and not have to worry about ruining something that is expensive to replace. 

I spent Friday night tracing my seam lines on the muslin pieces, so come Sunday I was all ready to start sewing pattern pieces together.  The only thing I managed to get together on Sunday was sewing the waistband pieces together.  Which leads me to my first lesson learned during this project: when labeling the pieces of muslin that you cut from the pattern, label them in the same way that the printed pattern pieces are labeled.  For some reason I labeled mine in every direction but the way it was printed, which meant that a lot of the time I had to reference the original pattern to figure out what way was up.

I also discovered that it's best to pin and then open the garment up like it will be worn prior to sewing a seam.  I ended up sewing pattern pieces together backwards once or twice.  This could have very easily been avoided had I taken the 3 seconds to double check that everything was put together correctly before I sewed.  I should get "double check everything" tattooed on my hands as a constant reminder.  It appears to be my biggest problem yet.

On Monday night I sewed the waistband facing and then sewed the skirt pieces together.  The next step was gathering the skirt in a few places.  This was my first time doing this and I was a bit nervous about it, but with Tasia’s excellent instructions, all went well.  It was starting to look like something!  In my excitement I held the skirt up to me to test drive it before I sewed up the back seam, and that’s when I realized: I had cut the wrong size!

I was really really frustrated at this set back, especially since a couple of times while cutting out the muslin I had noted to myself how close to my actual skirt size the Crescent was, which never happens.  This should have been my first clue!  I’m hoping this is the biggest lesson that I learn in this project: measure twice and then CIRCLE the size that I need to cut out on the pattern envelope.

I went to bed pretty annoyed and angry with myself.  Upon waking up yesterday morning I decided that all was not entirely lost.  I only have to remake the yoke of the skirt to get through the fitting issues.  Otherwise, the work that I did on the too-small skirt will still be applicable when I make the skirt with the fashion fabric.  I should be happy that I realized my mistake now, but I can’t believe I did something so careless as to cut out the wrong size of the pattern by accident.  I guess that comes with the territory of sewing in the evenings after work!  All in all, I am happy with how the skirt looks, even if there is a two-inch gap down the backside.  Even though I didn't press up the hem, it seems a bit long.  I might switch to the slightly shorter view for my real skirt. 

I’m really hoping to someday get through a project where I don’t make a major mistake.  What is the most frustrating sewing mistake you have made?