The ugly duckling turned into a beautiful swan... Well not quite!

This post follows on from my post about the hastily - too hastily - finished shirt for the GBSB sew-a-long.

I made view D but had problems with shoulder line, sleeve head and collar - they looked awful.
I have since removed sleeve tabs to make the shirt a cross between C and D

I fully intended to wear it as an over-shirt and everyone agreed that was most appropriate for the style. I realised however there was no way I was going to wear it because of the major wrinkles due to extremely poor fit around neckline and shoulders. I felt unattractive.

On Wednesday past  I asked Rory's advice - saying that I felt I needed to pull the front of the shirt up at the neck edge, on both sides and I explained that the collar had been too short for the amount of shirt to fit in it - or rather that there was too much shirt. She thought I was correct and the shoulder angle was a culprit but wanted to see the collar off. She thought the sleeves could perhaps be eased in and asked for the top of the sleeve to be released.

I spent the bulk of the time in our group unpicking the collar  (stitched, trimmed and topstitched) and the whole of both sleeves (edges overlocked but fortunately not cut down)- this was easier for me than fiddling with a little part. While unpicking, I took the opportunity to remove the sleeve tabs which I just don't like. I know that sleeve tabs are useful in holding sleeves up in an attractive way, or can be, attractive that is - and I like the look on others. I don’t like it on me.

Rory agreed that the neckline side of the front only of the shirt needed modified - pulled up and about 1.5 cms removed at the neck edge, tapering to nothing at the sleeve edge. She marked this.

She said there was 4 cm of excess in the sleeve head and suggested trimming the sleeve head down to see if that would work. Looking at it, she felt it was preferable to adjust there rather than at the underarm, another place she would normally adjust. She suggested where it should be removed and marked with a Frixion pen - which I unfortunately removed when I pressed the sleeve flat after taking out the lines of ease stitching! Oh well! One second it was there and the next - pouf! It was gone

On Thursday, in Lyn's group, I started to reconstruct. There is no doubt in my mind that it is harder to reconstruct a taken apart burrito yoke than it is to make it in the first place! Fortunately, I had access to the inside via the neckline, which I stay stitched again, the previous stitches having been cut away.

I felt like it was working with origami! I have quite a bit of difficulty with these kind of things but eventually worked it out and sewed the first seam on each side. That seam had easy access. I then really smoothed the remaining section of the three and marked just outside the previous stitching line to see where I needed to sew and how much fabric needed to be trimmed away. Quite a bit!! The stitching was done through the neckline - effectively I was turning this third section over the seamline of the first seam but rather than top stitching through all layers which would have worked, I suppose. I was turning to the inside through the neckline so I could stitch from there. It worked,

I stitched trimmed and pressed. The shoulder line was looking much better.

 

This is the right shoulder. Sleeve head looking nice.
Slight stretch lines where shoulder line meets collar - though not as bad as before!

Before

Sleeves next. Lyn helped me identify how much to trim away. I trimmed some then had to trim more. Probably as much as 1.5 cm from the top, tapering down to the sides of the sleeve head.

I had trimmed off all the markings during my original sewing and trimming.. Lyn helped me recreate these and said she wouldn't ease the whole sleeve head from notch to notch as I heard done previously to try to get all that excess sewn in. She showed me how to identify the top of the sleeve with notch and where to start and stop my ease stitching. There were no markings on the armhole either. The top of the sleeve would no longer be at the shoulder seam, but slightly off due to the changes made. My fabric didn't ease all that well.

I found that previously when I added lines of ease stitching I hadn't used a loose enough bobbin thread tension.  Eating was so much easier with the bobbin thread tension set at 2 (normal being 4).

Lyn kindly pinned in my sleeves (beautifully) and I sewed them in place, first basting to see if they were okay. I was extremely happy with the result. The difference was night and day from the previous stitching. Fortunately first time I realised my sleeve insertion was poor and I hadn't trimmed off any fabric when I overlocked so stitching was easier than it could have been. This time I overlocked, at home, trimming off appropriately.

A quick look at the collar suggested that I was perhaps going to be able to reuse it and not have that dreadful bunching of fabric. I quickly pinned it in place and confirmed that this was the case. Unfortunately, the collar and shirt and been trimmed rather more than the sleeves had been.

I made the assumption that the collar had not stretched unevenly and marked the centre. I also marked the centre of the shirt back neckline. Using the centre marks and the end points, I pinned in evenly. There was no excess of fabric in the shirt now - hurrah!! I didn’t have to clip the shirt but in retrospect think I should have perhaps done so at one point as there remains a slight tightness. I’m not sure if that was the solution. I had very limited scope for re-stitching as the earlier seam allowances had been trimmed.

Nevertheless, I was much happier with the shirt. The collar isn’t perfect, I’m sure, but is satisfactory for the purpose. The left shoulder line is nice but I'm less happy with the right shoulder line - this is the shoulder I most often have problems with. I think that following a shoulder injury, I have a bit of a forward shoulder more on that side than the other. When I try on RTW, it's always this right shoulder that gives me problems. I clearly have to learn how to fit this shoulder rather better than I have done. This alteration was a quick fix

 

Left shoulder line - nicer than right.

I was going to edge stitch the collar as I had done before but decided instead to slip stitch by hand (as per pattern instructions, as it happens!!). Last night (Friday) I did this while watching an old episode of father Brown.

I still remained set against additional buttons and holes on the band and collar as I definitely won’t be wearing this shirt closed. Though it sits better with a closure.

 

Not pressed or washed but you can see it's better although right shoulder still has problems

I need to take photos. I’m trying to decide whether to wash first to get rid of the marks I made with chalk and the marks to place the sleeve tabs. I might take a couple now - then at least it might get done! It also needs a good press but I'm afraid to press in some of the marks I made - unlike Frixion marks which disappear, others tend to become permanent. So I will do a couple of photos pre-wash and pre-press.

 

Not pressed or washed but you can see it's better although right shoulder still has problems

I feel that I have saved this shirt from one that would never but never get worn to one that has quite a useful life ahead of it. Additionally, I'm  sure that most of the problems I had were user error and not the pattern's fault. I won't make this particular style again but I do like shirts, so I'll chose a similar style but shorter and probably with a collar or a convertible collar so I can wear it open at the neck -I have learned that I really don't like shirts closed up to the neck.

I've been wearing the shirt while creating this post and trying to sort out my photo issue (see later) and it's comfy so will get worn.

Next time I will spend more time making toiles and trying to sort out my shoulder issue.

I'm having problems taking photos. My PC doesn't like my camera photos; although it can open them, there is tremendous barrel distortion. My camera software on the PC won't export in a form suitable for uploading here. I have Photoshop Elements but it won't open my Sony RAW files - perhaps a more updated version would - I have version 15. You can see some of the barrel distortion on the photos I have put here (my window and curtains look curved on left) though I cropped out the worst bits. I'll have to work out what to do as these are not satisfactory.

This was the shirt previously

Blogger and Google Drive photo problems solved (I hope!); update on pattern cutting and dressmaking techniques classes

Just to prove I can still add photos - but this is the only one here! Unless you want photos of apple blossom, tulips, snowy mespilus, grape hyacinths etc. The garden is awash with colour. Gorgeous!

One of the problems I had was that my photos disappeared from my blog. This followed computer problems after which I changed the location of the photos to organise them better (not realising the chaos this would cause).

A few months ago, I discovered that photos taken on my smartphone could be directly uploaded to Blogger. In the add photo box in blogger, taking directly from your phone was an option. This worked well and was very easy. The only issue was the lack of editing of the photo.

I think I changed the settings on my phone, however, as I didn't like that every photo I took was potentially going to be broadcast. This is only in retrospect I'm working this out, so I'm not sure. However, I think I changed the share/privacy settings a little (my photos were always private, anyway). Anyway, my phone photos stopped being available to blogger. I couldn't work out how to change it back. At the same time I cleared up the photos as my phone had lots of photos on it and any particular one was difficult to find - but found this meant I deleted them from blogger.

Fortunately, I was able to restore the photos, after finding out how by Google search, though I couldn't restore their links into my posts. I manually restored the links, or at least some of them. Others I decided could be missed off the post.

I now found that if I downloaded my phone photos onto Google Drive, I could upload them into blogger. Still no editing but that seemed to work for a little while. I shared the contents of Drive across all my platforms - by this time my laptop was long gone, so that meant PC, tablet and phone. I did some posts on my PC and some on my tablet. The tablet was easier as I could start working on a post when I had some spare time eg waiting for a class to start. My tablet did not have access to my PC hard drive where I stored photos and had editing software. I decided this was okay.

Although I shared Drive across all platforms, I found that if I changed Drive, I could not access the changes to Drive made after a particular post was started. This meant that the image of the Drive was outdated. Changes I had made didn't show. I had previously noted that not all photos I tried to put onto Drive got there. Anyway, I realised I couldn't just use my modified Drive to replace the photos.

After the problems with the computer, I tried to organise my photos in Drive as they were so very difficult to find. Not at all like the lovely folders of individual projects I had envisioned. However, I now found that my blog posts were full of empty photo frames, some with captions. Only so far back, though, as my use of Drive to get photos from my phone and onto Blogger was relatively recent.

I still had the photos in Google Drive but Blogger couldn't find them (the ones that I had taken from our shared drive were fine - these were the ones DH took on his camera). Okay, I thought - all I need to do is to copy them or move them onto my computer. No. Nothing that straightforward. I've solved it now, but if anyone has problems with this, please ask me and I'll give you more details how to manage the transfer.

Some of the photos downloaded okay (select, choose download, choose 'save as ' after message about zipped file appears and choose where you want them to go). They downloaded into a zipped folder, but I could choose the site of that. Getting the photos out of the zipped folder was fine except on a couple of occasions when my computer hung or something - saying it was going to take over 4 hours to copy 40 photos - something I achieved later in a few seconds.

After I was sure that all the photos had downloaded okay, I took them out of the zipped files and put them into the appropriate file. At this stage, I didn't then delete the photos from Drive - I may as well leave them there!

I started to go through the blog posts to try and replace the photos. I have replaced some but decided others didn't need to be there. I don't feel that it's worth a lot more of my time to sort them to the nth degree. I have the info in my physical learning log.

I have decided that my blog posts from now on will not use Drive as an intermediary unless it's simply to get a photo from my phone onto my PC. I can then call up the photo from the appropriate folder, edit it if necessary (I'll probably continue to use Photoshop Elements as I've used it before) and then get Blogger to download, I mean upload, the edited photo.

So my next posts should have appropriately edited and oriented photos, even if I take them in class on my phone! No photos in this post, though - I spent a long time getting photos back into my blog posts and I'm quite tired! I still have one post, that I know of, to update, but I can't find the photos anywhere!

Update on classes:
My pattern cutting class has restarted - we enrolled on Thursday past and the first official class is next week. We worked in the extra enrolment class on modifying the style of a quarter trouser block. Next class, we will start on our personal block.

The news isn't so good with the dressmaking techniques class (now called sewing techniques).

I have enrolled but the new person in charge wants to have so many students in the one class that it just won't work. Previously there was a class size of 12, with different classes on different nights divided into beginners, 2 or maybe 3 classes I believe (absolute beginners included and those who were starting course even though they had some experience), continuers and advanced. I did one term of beginners, where we learned some skirt making techniques, one term of continuation where we learned some trouser and jean making techniques and the third term you do your own project, with the tutor on hand to help as required.

However, new guy wants to have 20 students, mixed levels (as he says we are all starting at the beginning of a BTec.) and they have 20 enrolled in the fulltime college course, during the day - but during the day, at any one time, some are doing research, some are doing fabric painting, some are ...etc so there is never a situation of 20 trying to sit and sew.  There isn't the power supply for 20 sewing machines, certainly not safely.The room might physically hold 20 students. The new guy has been told repeatedly that a mixed class of 20 won't work - we are adults there for 2 hours per week to learn how to sew, not students there for several hours a day over a college year.

At this stage, I still don't know what's happening - I believe new guy is prepared to have 2 classes if the number of students is 24+, but at the moment , due to all the chaos around this - people being enrolled for the wrong course, wrong night, wrong fee, being told class was full when it wasn't, turning up for enrolment and finding no-one there, giving up because they don't like fee increase or want to do a course etc, the numbers have not reached 24 (last term there were 50+). D is trying to chase up the 35 students who told her last term they wanted to continue but who haven't enrolled.

So I'm going back next Monday (today is a bank holiday here) and don't know whether this will be a class of 12 which would be tolerable or a class of 20 - meaning that in 2 hours my maximum share of tutor input would be 6 minutes - but then there's all the whole class stuff, admin, course related work etc taking time away from hands on sewing. A lot of us who were together last term are very unhappy and it's possible that we'll withdraw altogether, but only as a very last resort. If that happens, D and R have said they'll do extra classes in their studio (they currently only have one night work each per week - previously they each worked 3 or 4 nights, so their income has plunged). That's great for me as their studio is only 20 minutes from my house - the college is an hour, but not so great for those students who live closer to the college.

I actually quite like the idea of a course as it keeps things more structured. Extra sessions would be a sewing bee and not provide me with the basic foundations of technique that I am seeking. So I'll be at college to the bitter end, whatever that end might be!!