#took the sleeves off it and then put darts in the armscye

[thesixthstar]

god idk how I acquired these powers, but I woke up today feeling rested, decided it felt like a Project Day, and then I just. did projects. I finally started my spoon carving kit (only got through carving the bowl before deciding my hand would be too mad at me if I did more), then finally re-died my faded black jeans back to black again, then finally took a stab at making a hand-me-down from my mom into a shirt I might ever want to wear. Now I'm gonna have a snack and lay out my presents for my DND party for them to find when they show up, and hopefully be all asleep before 3:30 AM because I am unstoppable today

[sheliesshattered]

I ended up spending most of yesterday fixing some fit issues with the scrappy sweatshirt -- which has somehow morphed into the Jyn Erso Sweatshirt in my mind, between the color and the sleeve details and the Star Wars-iness of it all.

I was hoping to finish it yesterday, but the fit issues were worth spending the time on, I think. Sewing on one of the sleeves revealed a large, weird bubble at the back of the armscye, and in dealing with that I ended up taking a chunk out of the tops of both the side back and side front panels where they connect with center back and center front, which fixed most of the issue I was seeing with the excess fabric problem.

But at that point the shirt was a weird in-between of not quite fitted enough, so I mentioned to Jack that I was thinking about taking out the two rectangular side panels that together were adding about 5" of width to the shirt. He suggested I just use a plain seam to take it in, instead of picking out all the stitching. That took out about 4" of that 5" width and resulted in a shirt that's significantly more fitted while still loose enough to pull on over my head. It also turned into this really cool seam detail at the side seam:

Of course, that'll be completely covered by the fitted vest I'll be wearing over top for our Batuu outing, but I like the way this sweatshirt turned out so I'll probably end up just wearing it on its own with jeans or whatever, too.

Once I had the body fitting the way I wanted it to, I fitted the sleeve into the armscye more or less by pinning it in place while wearing it. I was extra careful to match the inset panel on the sleeve with the inset panel on the shoulder, and I ended up having more fabric at the back of the shoulder than I needed (the other thing that was causing that weird bubble, as it turns out) but with the lapped seam and fitting it while wearing it, that was easy to shift that out and then trim it down later. I also ended up taking in the long seam of the sleeves themselves, so that the width matched up with the smaller armscye. The sleeves are completely fitted now, but there's enough stretch in this fabric that it's still comfortable and I have full range of motion.

With the sleeves attached, I was able to try the whole thing on and mark a couple of changes I wanted to make to the neckline and to level out the lower hem. I trimmed those to shape, then added the same sort of hem finish that I used for the sleeves: a narrow panel cut parallel to the knitted grain of the fabric, and thus unlikely to either roll or fray too badly. And with that, I could call the scrappy Jyn Erso Sweatshirt finished!

At some point in the next two and a half weeks, I want to gently hand-wash it to get all the chalk markings off, and then probably let it air dry. In the future I plan to throw this shirt in the wash with everything else, but for right now I don't want to risk something unraveling and needing fixed before I wear it to Batuu.

The other thing I may want to fiddle with later is the collar trim. When I wear it under the vest, it lays flat and sticks out exactly as much as I was hoping it would, for just a little bit of contrast color right at the neckline. But when it's worn on its own the neckline doesn't feel quite right. It probably just needs a couple of little darts at the shoulders to help it lay flatter against my neck -- or I might chop it down to a narrower width and let that be the solution. But either way, it's not something I'm going to mess with this month.

So with the shirt officially done and wearable, I can get back to fitting the vest. I left some pins in it from the last set of alterations I was thinking about, right before I decided to pause that project and make the sweatshirt to wear under it. But as soon as I put it on with the sweatshirt, I could see that my alterations were in the wrong place -- largely because I'd just done something similar with the sweatshirt.

During my last try-on a week or so ago, I had thought I needed to pinch in the top of the armscye to keep it from gaping over the cap of my shoulder, but that was making the bust fit weird, so I had started pinning that to take it in, before deciding that I really needed to be able to fit it over the shirt I'd be wearing it with.

With the complete flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants nature of the sweatshirt project, I had come to realize that my pattern for both the sweatshirt and the vest (and probably a bunch of other things, come to think of it) are way too small through the shoulder, especially on the center front panel. The center back seems to be fine, weirdly.

So instead of pinching out a triangle from the armscye to the neckline, I seam ripped the shoulder seam and sewed an extra rectangle of fabric onto the shoulder of the front panels, being careful to match the grain lines. I've pinned a new shoulder seam in place -- the same shape as the alteration I had previously pinned, but now with two or three extra inches of height between the shoulder and the bust.

It's gotten too dark to try to fit this very dark blue fabric in the mirror so I've set it aside to finalize tomorrow, but I could already tell that the bust is fitting much better, now that it's sitting where it should be instead of trying to float two or three inches too high. I may not even have to make any adjustments to the bust itself, but I'll wait until tomorrow to decide, after I can see the vest in bright daylight.

Besides that, there are a couple of other tiny changes I want to make -- lowering the curve of the part of the neckline that folds over, bringing in the flare over the hips at the side seam just slightly, and trimming off the extra length especially in the back panels. Those are all very simple changes, so I'm hoping to get through them all tomorrow while the light is good.

Then I'll be able to transfer all those changes to the paper pattern and cut out the exterior fabric from this same blue linen. The lining will have a seam where I added to the front shoulder, but unless it shows through really obviously, I'm not planning to re-cut the lining. I'm hoping to put some pockets in that'll live between the exterior and the lining anyhow, so I'm not too worried about that one extra seam showing through. And worst case I'll just re-cut that piece of the lining, since I should have enough linen left over after the exterior is cut.

Once I've got the exterior cut out and assembled, it'll be down to attaching the exterior to the lining and finishing all the edges, then adding the zipper and any other closures, and adding pockets if I have time. There are a few other detail things I'd like to do for my outfit if I have time (covering up laces and buckles, mostly), but all of that will only happen after both the vest and Jack's jacket are finished.

Still lots to do, but I'm feeling really good about my progress, and how cool everything looks. The sweatshirt isn't something I could have imagined and sketched out in its final form, but I am thrilled with the ways that necessity led to such interesting design details. I wanted something long-sleeve in that blue-gray color, and I ended up with something so much better than that, something I just love.

I tried on all the pieces of my outfit together, and I'm really happy with the look overall, and particularly the way the sleeves of the sweatshirt work with the vest and the hooded wrap and my little fingerless leather gloves. I can't wait to get the vest done and really see the final effect of all these pieces I've made. Less than three weeks to go now, but it's easy to stay focused and motivated when everything just looks so wonderful.

More pictures and updates to come as I continue to check things off of my list!