Frankenpattern - Anise fitting

Ooops - sorry guys. Im not sure if you've noticed but the weather over the last few weeks has been A-mazing which has meant total blog silence whilst I captured as much sun as possible. Fortunately, it's all over now and it's pouring with rain as I type!

Before my sunshine hiatus, I had finally started my Anise jacket from Colette. I have been dying to get stuck into this for ages but couldn't find the fabric I wanted so the pattern sat on the shelf for a while. Then on a recent trip to London I found some mustard cotton (I've decided it's like a brushed flannel) that was perfect. Then rather annoyingly I went on the Birmingham meet-up the next day and found some Mustard garbadine for half the price - damn you Barry's Fabrics! It turns out mustard fabric is like busses...

According to the pattern I am a 4 in the bust and a 6 everywhere else. I laboriously traced off the pattern in a 6, no harm in a bit of extra room up top I thought. I then proceeded to make toile no.1. The pattern went together fine and I set in both sleeves so I could see how it was sitting. Well. The answer is not good, the jacket was about 4 inches off even nearly meeting across the bust, I couldn't move my arms and there was serious wrinkling in the back.

This story could take some time but I can see you're already falling asleep so to cut a long story short about 5 toiles later I gave up most of fitting efforts and cut. Watch this space to see how that works out.

In brief, the first thing I did was a 2" FBA, it's taken me a long time to get my head around why I need to do this as I have fairly small boobs but have to do this a adjustment a fair bit so I'm guessing it's something to do with my back. I also did a 1cm forward shoulder a 1/2cm broad back adjustment a la Fit for Real People to give a bit more room for arm movement. These two adjustments were fine, it was the swayback that was the killer. After doing the massive FBA I could have shoved a cushion up the back of the jacket. Pinning out the excess horizontally worked a dream and the toile looked ace, however I was pinching out around 3" and transferring this to the pattern just did not work. It turned out something like this...

One huge swayback adjustment

This obviously didn't work as it added in a huge amount of extra fabric at the centre back. I read that you shouldn't do more than a 2cm swayback adjustment so I tried to spread it out across three smaller areas but that didn't work either.

Swayback adjustment spread across three points - still didn't work!

In the end I gave up and left in a single 1" swayback adjustment and went for it. However, with the incredible heat I couldn't bring myself to sit inside and make a jacket so it's still sitting there waiting for some bound buttonholes to appear.

Apologies for the lack of fitting pictures, it was far too stressful to be taking photos. By way of apology here is a picture of some cakes I made for my amazing friends' wedding a couple of weeks ago!

Liebster!!

Thank you so much to Fiona at Diary of a Chain Stitcher for nominating my blog for the Leibster award. I've been lurking blogs for a while now but I've only just started commenting and making my presence known. I've realised how amazing it is when people write lovely comments about your makes so its nice that from my comments Fiona checked out my blog and I got this ace nomination!

So, onto the questions...

1. What is your favourite film of all time and why?
My favourite film is Cinema Paradiso. I studied it at university and fell in love with it. My short essay on it also got a first so that helped too!

2. What kind of holidays do you like? Beach, city break, raving in Ibiza?!
I like a combination of beach and city breaks. I like doing things and love the hustle and bustle of cities but sometimes you can't beat lying on the beach with a good book and a cocktail.

3. I spend a lot of time commuting, if you had a spare hour on the train what would you do?
Sadly whenever I'm on the train for work I always manage to get lots of work done! There's nothing like a good train journey to sort your emails out. However a couple of weeks ago on the train I could be found hand stitching the lining to my Elisalex.

4. What is the best sewing book you have read?
The sewing book I use the most, practically every time I'm at the machine, is the Readers Digest Complete Guide to Sewing book. I "borrowed" it from my school teacher a loooong time ago and I appear to still have it. I feel a little bit guilty every time I get it out but at the same time it's so damn useful.

5. Knits or wovens?
Wovens wovens wovens! I'm still building up the courage to try knits.

6. What is your favourite blog?
Such an unfair question! But, the three blogs that I found and followed first and probably inspired me to get back into sewing were Tilly, Gertie and Julia Bobbin.

7. What other crafts do you do and which is your favourite?
I am baker plain and simple. I love making cakes but I love eating them more. If i'm not sewing I'm probably baking.

8. What is your karaoke song?
I do NOT do karaoke. I wish I did but I just don't have the balls to do it!

9. Sweet or savoury?
Sweet sweet sweet.

10. What is your favourite accessory?
Hmmm, I'm not very good at accessorizing so it would probably have to be any one of my handbags.

11. If I gave you £50 to spend on fabrics, patterns or craft supplies what would you make from it?
Ooh, well I really like the Watson jacket from Papercut Patterns so maybe I'd make that up in a nice camel wool. But then again I really want to try some of the Deer and Doe patterns too. 

That was fun. And in return I shall nominate the following bloggers for the Liebster Award:

1. Sabs at Tybalt: king of cats

2. Lara at Dreaming of Avonlea

3. Hannah at Made with Hugs and Kisses

4. Rachel at A Study in Stitching

5. Ami at The Litle Tailoress

I think I'm supposed nominate 11 bloggers. Sorry. I'm also going to be incredibly lazy and once again ask the same questions as I was asked! Sorry again.

In other news I am having an absolute fight with my Anise jacket. I've been fitting it for what seems like months now (it's been a full week). They say 'measure twice, cut once', well I've measured about 50 times and now i'm giving up and cutting! Wish me luck...