The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Let's start with the good.

I rarely work in Seattle but when I do it usually involves me complaining because I hate commuting and being away from home longer than I have to.  But then Drygoods Design moved their store to downtown Seattle and suddenly having to go to Seattle seems more like a gift than a pain in the butt.  No more complaining from me.

My husband - who usually has to listen to all my complaining - thanks you.

So I made my first trip to Drygoods Design a couple of weeks ago and picked up this lovely yarn dyed cotton lawn.  It's soft and light and the most beautiful color, but it's not overly sheer which is always my biggest concern with lawns.  I bought two yards not knowing quite what I was going to do with it, but it only took me a day or two to settle on Pauline Alice's Carme blouse.  I had never heard of this pattern maker until I came across a version of this blouse online, but I'm usually a year behind most things so that's no big surprise.  The pattern is probably more involved than most simple things that I make, but she has a sewalong on her blog so I figured that I would have a little help if I got stuck.  I have to say that when I first saw that the sewalong was made up of videos I kind of thought it would be a pain in the butt to turn to them for help, but they were actually really helpful in explaining some of the steps.  Apparently, I'm a visual learner.  Who knew?

As for the pattern, I cut out my recommended size but I added an inch to the length of the body because I'm perpetually worried about shirts coming out too short.  I also added1/2 of an inch to the length of the sleeves because some people noted that they wished that the sleeves were a bit longer.  Adding the length to the body was most likely overkill because it probably would have been a good length without the added inch, but better safe than sorry I suppose.  As for other fit issues, in looking at my handmade tops lately I'm beginning to think that I should be making some alternation to the back/shoulder area because it's a little tighter than I would prefer it to be when moving around.  One day I need to take the time to really understand fit and alterations.

That day, however, is not today.

I love the little pleats on the shirt and the fact that the pattern has you pleat a square of fabric and then cut the pattern piece out of the pleated fabric.  This way it doesn't matter if your pleats aren't perfect - your pattern piece will still be the right size.  Ingenious!  In putting the shirt together there were two moments that left me scratching my head, but the videos helped a lot with figuring things out.  I will say that I prefer Grainline Studio's explanation for making the sleeve placket, but that may just be a personal preference.

As for the sleeves, I debated about adding the tabs so that they can be rolled up since I'm perpetually cold and will probably always  have my sleeves down but in the end I figured that I'd try them out just for fun and I'm really happy that I did.  I love the little added detail and I love the look with the sleeves rolled up.  Honestly, I'm super-excited that this is such a wearable shirt - both for work and for home.

But now for the ugly - my fabric marking pen has decided to revolt against me and has bleached out little bits of fabric where I marked it for the pleats.  You can barely see it in these photos, but you'll have to trust me that there are little bleached out dots running across the pleats.  The good news is that I feel like the old me would have thrown a total hissy fit about it, but nowadays I'm too tired for such antics.  Mostly I just let out a big groan.

But help me out here, people.  What do you recommend for fabric marking?  Because I have a feeling that me and this pen are on the outs.