Issy Fit

In a miraculous turn, my latest Style Arc package arrived on Friday afternoon. Since I joined the Club, it included my ordered pattern (Elle pants), my free pattern (Janet Jacket - yup had to reorder since I trashed my first pattern), my free pattern of the month (Issy top, which thrills me from a design perspective) and some more of the black Bengaline (more to come on the topic of this fabric at a later date).

In brief - I ordered the Elle pants in the wrong size (12 vs 10, my error) so I wonder how difficult it will be to make them. Fortunately, Andrea ordered them in my right size, so I may just trace hers.

Apparently, the Janet Jacket was delayed because they discovered an drafting concern in the bust of the size 12 - the one I muslined to hell, so it's not so relevant to my latest, hideously-fitting version of this jacket - and they had to change it. Since I'm starting from scratch, I don't suppose this makes much difference to me - but apparently, the original 12 was drafted too tight in the bust. Alas, I'm not going to be working with the same original version as I started with last time, so I'm not going to be able to take every (correct) alteration for granted. Whatevs. I'll worry about this next week.

Now, let's get to today's topic - the Issy Top:

IMPORTANT: On the topic of omnipresent, minor irritation with Style Arc (despite improvements in communication and delivery time), this pattern is printed on thermal paper - unlike the previous patterns I've received from them. That means, when I pressed the pattern on the right side (I know, you're not supposed to do it but I always do and there's no problem), it melted:

I then had to spend an hour with my husband scanning and processing the instructions and tech drawings to make them legible again. Yeah, I ironed those bits first. They're only nominally readable now. What a pain in the ass. Intriguingly, when I carefully experimented next with ironing from the wrong side of the paper (gotta get those freakin' creases out in order to trace, after all) the ink came through on the wrong side and got darker on the right side, but there were no problems with melted ink. Proceed with caution.

I'm really trying to get with the whole "I don't care how long this takes, it's my fucking hobby" philosophy because I've worked on it for 3 hrs and haven't got to the pattern tracing yet.

Here's the deal - this pattern, as drafted, is not shaped like me at all. Well, altered-Issy, she is Kristin-shaped, we gotta hope. Cuz I sure put in the effort.

To wit:

My arm circumference is smaller than the size 10 and higher too but the unaltered sleeve head curve is pretty much like mine...

Oh, this is where things start to go to hell, from an alteration perspective. My shoulders are narrower than the pattern's, though the Clothing Engineer has indicated that the pattern fits small in the shoulders (and my math corroborates this).

The thing is that the alterations for the front and back - especially given the whack look of the pattern pieces - have to equal one another, though it's unclear exactly where I need to remove my shoulder length. My sloper is for a crew neck T. This is a high-necked, wrap-V. It's not really an apples-to-apples comparison.

After considering the outcome of every change (I hope), I landed on these alterations (penciled around the original pattern lines:

Altered back piece

Altered front piece - see what I mean about the challenge of enacting this alteration on asymmetric pieces that fold all weird-style??

Altered sleeve

This is the fabric I'm going to use:

Appropriately stretchy rayon jersey from Gorgeous Fabrics - it's by some designer apparently...

On an unrelated note - or maybe it's quite related since I seem to be making a sexy, knit top in animal print - I just received info that my 25 year high school reunion is coming up. Process that, if you will: I have been out of high school for most of my life which, given that I am still a Clementine to my core, is rather confusing to me. I'm tremendously grateful to still know much of my graduating class (there were 20 of us), so it will be more like a party in a weird venue than a total reintroduction to a bunch of middle-aged people I don't know. Seriously though...