A Summer Sewalong Project

My local Garment Guild is one of my favourite groups of people :) We have a lot of fun and have kept our Guild going over the last year via Zoom meetings. We've had some great guests and speakers, and have kept in touch with each other. I really enjoy it. 

But of course we don't meet over the summer, so this summer I suggested a sewalong so that we could all keep sewing together while apart ;) 

Our library systems in this area subscribe to CreativeBug, so with our library cards we can all log in and follow along with tons of classes. Our summer sewalong follows all the pattern drafting courses run by Cal Patch -- there are 10 sessions which works out perfectly for us to do one a week until the end of the summer! 

This week we started with drafting our own Boxy Top. It's a great intro to the process for people who have never used measurements to draft out a simple pattern for yourself before. It's fairly straightforward, but there is a lot of potential in such a basic patterns, some of which are shared in the class -- colour blocking, dividing it into panels, adding pockets etc. I think this would be a fun project to experiment with and see what you could do with it. 

I drafted mine out but second guessed the arm depth and shortened it by about 3/8" since I am short between bust and shoulder. However, I should have trusted the numbers because my first sewn sample is a bit too grabby into my armpit area. I've added the 3/8" back onto the pattern and will try again. 

I used some linen from my stash (yay, using up big chunks of leftovers!) and left the hem raw since the selvage is a pretty line of shimmery thread. I am thinking about maybe embroidering a motif along the neckline to spark it up a little. 

The fit is great (except for the armhole boo boo, which is still wearable though not perfect) and I really liked the simple process. 

It was fun to see what others had done with this project, and now we are all looking forward to week two -- drafting a simple pair of wide leg pants. At least I hope it will be simple! Maybe I'll finally have a pair of pants that fits. I am hoping to learn more about basic pant drafting so that I'll understand patterns and alterations better. I hardly ever wear pants so haven't really made many, and those I've tried have been rather disastrous. Onward and upward.