Sunday 12 August 2012

still alive - now with bathrobe :-)

A little over a month ago I had this idea that in order to prepare for my Christmas dress I should probably try to figure out how to read patterns and make something from a commercial big 4 pattern. So,, after some searching through my ever increasing stash (despite all my fabric diets and destashing attempts - gosh, I have no will power) I came up with this - fast AND easy B5724 Butterick - a robe for my son.


And no, not just any robe, I was going to use thick brown flannel and make it a bit like a Jedi robe, you know, the sort that Obi-Wan Kenobi might wear around the house when it's a bit chilly - obviously not on Tatooine, but maybe whilst staying at the temple. So I ordered 3 yards of the flannel from fabric.com and washed it. After ironing it, it became apparent that it had either not been as wide as it claimed to be or that it shrank quite a lot or a mixture of both, as a result the suggested layout did not work. All of a sudden it looked like just getting a robe out of the 3 yards would be a struggle, never mind the additional hood. I solved the problem by halving the sleeve length and instead of a cuff, we just have a normal hem. He doesn't care, why should I :-)



I did find the instructions at times a struggle, mostly because it was every word counts. Baste, Gather, iron in place, it just took some time to get used to. Also I did the facing differently to the instructions and after a while I only consulted the instructions and instead looked at my husbands store-bought robe to see how they did things (it's lasted 10 years and still going strong, so I took that as a sign of it being well constructed). Here is a close-up of one of the two pockets.



It took a long time for me and I realised that when they say that flannel dulls the needle quickly, they really mean quickly (I went through 5 needles in total). It turned out to be a bit more time consuming and a bit less fast then I thought, but hey, you live and learn. Spring is almost upon us here in Queensland, so soon I shall go back to skirts and tops for me :-)

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