Morgan Makes

Just over a year ago, when I got back into sewing, I bought a bunch of patterns, including a vest, a corset, and a bunch of baby clothes. I had to edit one of the baby patterns in order to make my nephew a denim jacket, because there were none that actually had the shape I wanted (the closest I could find at the store had a zippered hoodie pattern and a long-sleeved t-shirt). I made myself a vest with the men's vest pattern, and last I tried it on it was simultaneously too broad for my chest and too small at the bottom. I haven't actually used any of the other patterns that I bought, but I'm sure they also wouldn't fit me very well because my body shape is like neither men's nor women's standard sizes. I've gotten a bit better at editing patterns, such as the edits I made to the Cypress Dress so it would fit my spouse, but sometimes it seems like it's almost as much work making standard patterns fit as it would be to make a brand new pattern for one pers...

(This post was written on the 18th, and edited and posted on Patreon on the 20th. On the 19th, I was busy getting married!) Needless to say, the power outages messed up my sewing timeline. What messed it up even more, though, is my choice of fabric for my bodysuit. It was advertised as "lace," but it's not. It's mesh with some designs on it. Perhaps they figured "lace" was a better term for it than "embroidered mesh," since the sequins and glitter and tiny beads were neither embroidered nor even sewn on. The entirety of this fabric is either really loose mesh, or a pile of glue. I sewed a couple of samples to make sure it would even sew on my machine, and to adjust the settings properly for it. The samples went well with a somewhat short stitch length and medium tension. I tested to make sure my machine could sew through two layers, I tested to make sure it could sew through this fabric and the more dense stretch mesh I'm using to back it up to...

Author's note: This post was not sponsored by and is not associated with Mood Sewciety, I am just a simp. I'm a huge fan of printable patterns (especially free ones). They're not as hard to use as conventional patterns, at least for me, and if you mess up one of the pattern pieces or decide you want it in a different size, you can reprint that piece without having to print the whole pattern again (or buy a whole new pattern like you may need to with a storebought one!). They also, generally, save waste because they're printed on demand rather than in bulk by a corporation that generates tons of waste and makes more patterns than will ever be used. Lately I've been using some printable patterns from Mood Sewciety; I especially love them because not only is the blog populated with cute and easily customizable designs, but the patterns are free (and royalty-free!) and much more size-inclusive than a lot of patterns. That's actually how I found them, because I was t...

This is gonna be a long one, so TL;DR: I've screwed up a bunch while making the dress, but I'm incredibly lucky so it's turning out well anyway! Note: this post was published after it was written. It was written on March 8th, posted on Patreon on March 9th, and posted publicly on Blogger on March 12th. I will generally be posting about a post a week (until my general posting frequency goes down) on Patreon with one week of early access, but the ones in quick series such as this one may be faster just to avoid public readers getting weeks behind what I'm doing on a particular project. On Monday, I was working on my fiance's wedding dress for most of the day, and I got very little done. Everything was cut and I was ready to sew once I switched the thread in my machine to white (I had been using black for the test pieces, just because it was already in the machine and I knew I would need a lot of white thread in the upcoming days). Fortunately, as I was about to start ...

I mentioned in part one that I was anxious about how long it might take for the fabrics to get here. Both packages got here within a week! So, including today (in which I got no actual sewing in on either of our actual outfits, but did work on one and sew a test for the other), that's two whole weeks to sew! I actually got a lot done today because I was so excited that the fabrics had arrived. First, I pre-washed the suiting (and only the suiting--the lace used for my bodice is dry-clean only, and there's not really a point in pre-washing the other fabric for a garment that can't be washed). I did this not only because it's good practice, but because the lace I ordered from the same company has glitter on it, and they put the two in the same bag with nothing between them, so it was covered in glitter. While that was in the wash, I used muslin and some of the stretch mesh I got to sew a test piece of my bodysuit. I used the same mesh I got for the final product for two r...