There are certain details and things that can irritate the hell out of me and once I have noticed them there is usually no way for me to not notice them. In short, I like things to be lined up and logical. This has been magnified by the fact that my profession involves making user friendly software where everything is supposed to be logical and obvious. While I don’t do graphics myself I am getting more and more involved in critiquing that as well. Call it occupational hazard, I pretty much feel flooded by frustrations when I use any kind of digital device over all the things there that are just plain WRONG or stupid!

It plagues me in daily life as well. Take this for instance:

This is something I see every year when I visit my dentist. “Brukte skotrekk” means “Used shoecovers”. Are they supposed to be thrown on the floor? It is not really obvious that they are supposed to go into a trash bin is it? Gah! I bite my lip, curl my fingers and make sure to leave before I risk finding myself moving the bin into the right place. There is one thing worse than these mistakes in my head and that is anal people that correct them. Cannot be known as one of them 🙂 .

This hasn’t exactly made sewing easier. I see every flaw and usually nothing but the flaws. I tried to fix that issue by looking at store bought clothes but that was a mistake as well. Now I cannot look at them either without seeing all the mistakes and believe me, these poor souls slaving away making our clothes are making a lot of mistakes. Take any piece of clothing with stripes as those are in fashion and you will probably find that they aren’t all aligned correctly.

So to give myself a real challenge (and to guarantee my own dissatisfaction afterward) I made a striped baby bodysuit. It was initially meant as a casual match for the suit I made for my baby boy in the last post. I however realized right after I started cutting into the fabric that these two fabrics weren’t a match at all. The linen was too dark and the blue stripes were too dark and too wide.

I used a pattern from Ottobre 1/2014. Either I cut the collar wrong or the pattern was a bit off since it wasn’t long enough to fit the pattern description. Otherwise it was a decent pattern though a little bit wide for my little boy that isn’t skinny at all. The fabric is a Lillestoff fabric I bought at Uglemor. Beautiful shine on that fabric!

What I learned during this process is that there are quite a few places that the stripes need to be matched. Listing these for future reference.

– Upper and under part of the collar
– Side seams
– Underam seams
– Back seam
– Making sure the snaps are aligned correctly so the back opening lines up
– The cuffs on the arms both need to have the same color on the bottom
– The arm pieces needs to end on the same stripe color
– The underarm seams.
– The front edges of the collar need to end on the same stripe color and they need to be of even size.
– You might want to somewhat match the sleeves to the stripes on the bodice.

I made mistakes on some of these and I didn’t even attempt the last one. What I found was that it helped to pin every other stripe and make sure to pin on the edge of a stripe so you can check both sides to see if it is aligned correctly on both sides.

Believe it or not, I am somewhat satisfied with the result even if there are flaws. The stripes are quite well matched most places and I feel like I have learned something.

Hungry supermodel

No do not turn to this angle, there is a flaw *doh*