Pluses and Minuses

I currently have about 5 sewing projects all being sewn at the same time and I am making very slow progress with all of them!

It has so far been a new year of pluses and minuses in my sewing exploits.

Pluses
I have learned two new techniques! Which are awesome!
For my flatmates skirt I tried blind hemming with my machine (without a specialist foot). I tried this after reading this, which slightly blew my mind, I thought it would be really hard! But it's so easy! Admittedly some of my "pin pricks" on the outside of the skirt are somewhat larger than I would like, and the whole thing seems oddly tight stitch wise so it isn't quite perfect, but if I bought something with a hem like that I wouldn't think anything of it! It looks SO much better than my normal hems, partly possibly because I was forced to fold the hem over properly for once, and take more time going in a straight line! My hems are normally terrible-but this isn't! Now I just need to finish it and get Lindsey to try it on again, and hope that the ease I have added in is enough!

I also tried a new approach to sleeves. Easing in sleeves is again not a task at which I excel. Generally I find it super fiddly and end up with tucks everywhere, not always in places where they look intentional. Plus I hate that you can't really see what your doing, making it terribly easy to put the things in backwards, or upside down or just weirdly wonky. So for my Joan dress I tried doing it on the flat (ie before I sewed the side seams). It was a revelation! It was so straightforward, you could see what you were doing, it was easy to adjust the sleeve head ease, no sewing in a tiny ring of fabric and no tucks! They went in so easily and looks great (except that I seem to have overstretched one part so it wrinkles when I move, but that is a knits/feed-dog problem, not a sleeve problem.


Minuses
I whipped up the bodice of the Joan dress, and the darts are horrible. Nipply doesn't really do it justice! I am going to have to do them again, and I'm not sure that I can fix it easily...darn. Also, one of the darts seems to be an inch lower that the other, for no apparent reason, I've checked the pattern and they are the same height. hmm. As I had to slash and spread the darts to get them to lie flat at all, moving it up an inch isn't really an option unless I re cut out the entire front. As its a knit and therefore inherently bodgeable, I am going to try pulling up one shoulder a bit (possibly where I went wrong anyway, I shall have to have a close look at the grain and see if I have just done the seam wrong to start with). Plus I should probably try and fix the sleeve bucking problem if I am doing things properly.