S.O.S.

Don't panic:
Bambi was not harmed during the creation of this blogpost.

In sewing circles, SOS also stands for "Summer Of Sofilantjes".

In this summerlong event, another pattern takes the spotlight every week.

This week the challenge came from a creative lady, who loved combinations. Jennifer challenged us to mash up the Summer Surprise and the Solis pattern. For the less experienced mashers (that's me) instructions were posted at the Sew&Show Facebook group.

Time for me to make a bow!

Daughter dearest and I searched the stash for suitable fabric and she dug up a bambi panel. I bought it ... just like that. For no other reason than it being so stinking cute.

Solis comes with 2 skirt options: circle skirt and pleated skirt. That choice was made when we picked the panel. With only 70cm in width, a circle skirt was not an option. Daughter dearest still wears the pleated Solis I made last year, so I only had to trace the Summer Surprise parts of the mashup.

I bought Summer Surprise* for this mashup. My GUTA challenge works!
At least it did this time: bought a pattern and used it right away.

The back bodice assembly was not a walk in the park. My ability to misread drawings was at an all time high. It's a good thing the designer put that tiny little sentence in the instructions "pin the bow in position and CHECK on the right side before stitching". I followed the footsteps of Thomas Edison and discovered a lot of ways how NOT to pin the bow. An overview? 1. on the wrong side of the binding 2. skewed 3. backwards. And there were various combinations of those 3 in between. If not for that tiny little sentence mr Seam Ripper would have worked overtime. Thank you for that sentence, Anne ;-)

The binding ... sigh ... not my best work. I eyeballed it. I could not use the original pattern lengths, since I was not using ribbing and we changed the neckline. Let's just say my eyeballing skills need upgrading. I pulled too hard on some parts and not hard enough on other parts. 

When my daughter put it on the first time, I was really disappointed in how it turned out. I even thought of seam ripping the whole thing. But my daughter like it, so I let it go. *Let it go! Let it gooooo!* Elsa would be so proud of me ;-)

I actually did not have a choice in the matter, as my daughter did not want to take the dress off. Posing was not on her priority list, so a few pictures in the yard had to suffice.

That evening when she went to bed, I came back to my nemesis and tamed those crooked bindings with my Steam Powers (ok, the iron did most of the work, but I still felt like a superhero when it worked). New pictures were not an option for my daughter, so you get a hanger one. I shamelessly replaced my daughter with a pillow to get some volume at the waist.

The one thing in this dress I loved from the start was how the seam turned out. I went for decorative stitches. You can't really see it on these pictures. I made some details pictures of the pattern for a tutorial:

"What to do if you get tired of your twin needle?"

Stay tuned if you want to read about how I tackled decorative stitches on stretchy fabric.

If you plan on purchasing a Sofilantjes pattern, feel free to support my pattern addiction by clicking this affiliate link to Sofilantjes Patterns. The price does not change for you, but I get a tiny commission.

* the Summer surprise pattern has retired May 2018.

As always:
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