A sewing blog about building a functional, cohesive handmade wardrobe, one garment at a time.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Plantain #4 and this business of taking good photos

I have always loved stripes.  My wardrobe always contains at least one striped tee.  But now that I have discovered the liberating world of successfully sewing my own knit tops, I think I am headed for stripe overload.  This is my second striped Plantain, and I have two more cuts of striped cotton/lycra jersey in adult tee quantity.  I need to buy more solids.

I wore my new tshirt to church on Sunday so that we could take some photos on the way home.  This city definitely offers some interesting backdrops.


My husband is getting better with his photo composition, but today I realized that I need to tell him to look critically at the clothes and tell me, for example, that my skirt is lopsided (that seam is parallel to the hem, I swear).  Or that I'm pulling one side of my striped shirt down with my hand so the stripes look wonky when I assure you they are not.


I actually made the skirt two years ago out of old jeans.  But now that I am thinner I need to take in the waistband a bit so it doesn't go lopsided when I wear it.


I also didn't realize that I was wearing my hair draped over my shoulders in every picture until I got home and saw that there was not one good photo of the neckline.  So I had to resort to bathroom pictures after putting the baby to bed.  Man, I look tired.  It was a long weekend.



So we have a little to work on, when it comes to photos.

But back to the pattern.  I guess this is now officially a TNT pattern for me.  My final fit adjustment was as follows: I cut a straight 40 for the back.  For the front, I cut a 40 in the shoulders, and graded out to a 42 at the bottom of the armscye, then continued as a 42 all the way down, but with 40 length.  I cut a 40 neckband and a 42 sleeve.  I am very happy with the fit, so I'm done tweaking.  Yay!



I used a cotton/lycra from Girl Charlee.  It is very comfy and silky, but the fabric did pill a bit after I prewashed it (six times).  For the neckband I used a purple rayon-lycra from Joann's.  It doesn't quite match - but I wanted a solid neckband and it did not occur to me until afterwards that I could have done so with my striped fabric if I had done a little math and centered the purple stripe under the pattern piece.  I really love the color combination, and I will definitely wear this a lot, but after looking at it some more I think maybe thinner stripes are more flattering on me.

Not much else to say about this one.  Love it!

5 comments:

  1. I too have issues taking pictures - and have the clothes and the kid look good at the same time. I love the shirt and you can never have enough striped shirts in my opinion!

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  2. Really cute outfit! I love stripes, too.

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  3. Love the whole outfit! The shirt, skirt and those boots!

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  4. Love your Plantain! It's my current favorite pattern. I have the same problem with my husband taking photos of me in my sewn garments... he took 15 photos of me with my Plantain sleeve hem flipped up. Sigh.

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  5. So cute!! I really want to do a Plantain in stripes. Soon, I hope! I was cracking up at this post, because even though my husband is a PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER (seriously!), we have the same conversations, like "why didn't you tell me that my long necklace was draped over one boob?" and "please let me know next time my BRA IS HANGING OUT, okay??!" Sheesh! Of course, I also say, "please make me look skinny!" with mixed results, but I can't say that's entirely his fault.

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