Sugar Slip

This week I've been working on the Tina Givens Sugar Slip.  It should not take a week to do this, but it did.  First of all,  I did not have enough Fabric.  The pattern called for 1-1/8 yard, so I got 1.25 to be sure.  Well, I think I needed 3 yards!  Most of Tina Givens skirt patterns are cut with a bell shape, which uses most of the width of the fabric.  So, even though my fabric was 50-54" wide, I'm sure that even 60" wide still would have taken more - and I made the small size!

















I made mine out of a pretty dotted swiss that I got at Vogue Fabrics on my recent trip to Chicago - so obviously, I was not going back to get more fabric.  I did have some white batiste (also from Vogue Fabrics but online several years ago) that I used to cut out the top half of the back, the back facing (which for some reason she calls "interfacing" and the back of the pockets.  You can see here that I stitched and serged the two sections together.  Unfortunately, the batiste is not as white as the dotted swiss, but I am planning on wearing this under other garments, so it should be OK.  (you ca't really see the difference in color in the picture.




















And, as you can see in this photo, it is a bit see-through - so it DEFINITELY will be worn under other things!

When I was serving the side seam, I accidentally nicked my fabric.  Arghh.  I put a little fray check on it, but it still looked bad.  Ended up making a tab and sewing it over the cut.  I made it big enough to look purposeful.










I like the way this pattern has you sew the facings to the front and back before you sew the two together.  However, it's really tricky to sew around the straps on the inside without catching them.  I think this is because the measurements are off.  Either the straps need to be more narrow, or the bodice needs to be wider where they attach.  Before trimming, there was only scant 1/4" seam allowance space along side the straps where they attach.

Here's another pattern snafu.  The pockets.  They are ridiculously large on the top and go above where they attach at the sides.  This makes an upper part that keeps falling down when the garment is warn.  I saw this immediately when I put the dress on the dress form.  I decided to cut the upper part off of the pocket and re-sew it.  Problem solved.

The pattern instructions have you do all the gathering on the sides and sew the rolled hem last.  I think it is much easier to sew the rolled hem before doing the gathering.  It took me a while to learn how to use the rolled hem foot with my machine, but I love what a nice clean finish it gives.  I did still have a couple of places where I had to re-insert the fabric into the foot, but I'm determined to master this one day!








Another problem was that the lines drawn on the pattern do not match the line drawing for view B, which was the one I made.  You are to gather the side seams at the hem and also a diagonal line on the pattern.  The diagonal lines are what were off.  They had diagonal lines going from the side and CF, but that is not what is shown in the line drawing.  Also, the diagonal lines on the sides are not nearly in far enough to the CF, so those needed to be redrawn.  Even still, they probably should have gone up even higher and angled down closer to the CF at the hem.