Wardrobe in Week

I finished two of my tops for the Wardrobe In A Week yesterday as well as making a pair of PJs. However, I finished very late at night thanks to operator error on the overlocker which led to some broken threads and rude words in the workroom. I've not quite worked out what I am doing wrong, but I know its me not the machine so I am content that more practice will produce better results.

Today I have been working all day on the plaid overdress for the Wardrobe in a Week. Whatever possessed me to decide to use an invisible zipper on a plaid dress??? Perhaps subconsciously, I just wanted to spend four hours of my life in a state of increasing frustration whilst trying to match plaids across an opening that could not remain basted closed during the actual zipper insertion process!!!!!

In case anyone was wondering how to tackle this, and I don't claim this to be the right way to go about this, I basted the back seam closed initially, to make sure the plaids were matched across the opening. (this took four attempts). I then pressed the seam so I had a placement crease to aim for but before removing the tacking, I laid my zipper on the dress and marked the top and bottom horizontal plaid line on the zipper with magic marker. Then I undid the tacking and placed the first side of the zipper into the opening with pins, carefully marking the zipper with a magic marker line on the first and last line of each plaid grouping. I then squared across the zipper with my seam gauge (it has a natty bit that flips out that allows you to square across small items... not sure its the proper use for it, but it worked) and drew a magic marker line on the other side of the zipper. I was then able to line the plaids up on the second side of the zipper fairly accurately. It did work fairly well. I pinned in both sides of the zipper at the same time rather than sewing one, then the other. This allowed me to carefully draw the zipper up to check the placement was right before I sewed the zipper in permanently. I will admit the plaids don't match exactly, but the back seam is curved so perhaps they wouldn't have done anyway. I don't think its too noticable and I didn't think it was too bad a result.

Hopefully I will have a dress to show you tomorrow. Sharon asked why I wasn't sure about including the spotted top into the WIAW...well, its the spotty print. It didn't go as well with the grey plaid as I would have liked, and I think its because some of the spots are a creamy mushroom colour which doesn't look good with the grey. It is wearable with the dress, but I think I would only want to do so on one of those "oh help, everything else is in the laundry basket" days, and I didn't feel I really wanted to submit a garment like that for the WIAW. The top does, however, look wonderful with black (of which I have a startlingly large amount of items) so all is not lost. I am hoping to make a satin blouse as my third top but I guess I'd better go get on with the hand sewing on the dress, otherwise I will run out of week before I get the blouse cut out.