I’ve been doing a lot of sewing in the last several months, and I’m starting to see a difference in the general construction mindset between sewing and knitting or crochet.
Knitting and crochet are more like playing with Lego. You build up stitches until you get the desired shape and size, and then you do your finishing. Even with seamed garments, there’s play between seaming and building, seaming and finishing. Often there will be a bit of both happening, like when you pick up stitches along a sweater neckline to knit on a collar.
Sewing is more like putting a puzzle together, except you have to cut out the puzzle pieces first.
Maybe there will be adjustments required to make the finished item fit better.
Or maybe there will be pattern mistakes. Crochet patterns are often off on their stitch counts, as are knitting patterns. Somewhere in my Vogue Knitting magazine collection is a pattern for a sweater which is missing the sleeve instructions entirely — and they are non-standardly shaped with a different stitch pattern from the body. Not a problem for someone who knows how to design and construct their own sleeves, but a total roadblock for those who don’t.
Most pattern errors seem to be made because of deadline pressures. Sometimes, especially for indie patterns with no deadlines attached, the author either couldn’t be bothered, or didn’t realize technical editing was even necessary. Other times it’s because the author was trying to give the reader more than they had the time and resources to give.
All of the above is a long preamble to the jacket I just finished making from Bold & Beautiful Easy-Sew Clothes. All the signs point to an author who had more care and passion than they had time to give under the deadline, which meant I had to improvise a few times. The book errors I’ve discovered so far have erred on the side of generosity, meaning they give the reader as much as possible, but there have been a few just outright errors.
For the book overall, the most notable error is in the sizing index table on page 7. There are more sizes available on the accompanying CD than the table indicates. For example, the gathered skirt pattern is listed as being available for US sizes 10-16, but on the CD a size 18-20 pattern is also included. Fortunately, there is a different table on the CD listing the actual sizes available.
This tells me the author’s heart was in the right place, but they just didn’t have the time to finish the book properly and have the technical editing done.
On the Kimono Jacket shown above (that’s the official name; it’s more like a reproportioned Spencer), there were also two errors which required some work to overcome: the button placket provided on the size 2 pattern I was using was actually for the size 1 version, and was therefore too short for the front it had to attach to. Upon checking the size 1 pattern file, I confirmed it has the size 2 placket, which at least would be easier to recover from.
Also, the sleeve shaping is off. The cuff as drawn is far deeper than what the instructions say to expect. I was able to fix this myself with a small amount of redrawing. The top photo shows the original cuff, the bottom the updated cuff after I did some sorting-out.
In the end, it was all right that the placket was a different length because the two fronts and the back are all different lengths anyhow, and the sleeves were an easy fix.
I'm not much of a sewist (yet?), so this project had some personal firsts:
first time using interfacing
first machine-sewn buttonhole
first facing
first sleeve seam topstitching
also first improvising on already-cut pattern pieces
The pocket is also not quite made the way it’s shown in the book, but that is on me for not figuring out the instructions until it was too late.
I’ve worn the jacket a few times and been pleased with how it fits and how it turned out in the cotton canvas I used. I’m looking forward to using it as a layering piece come spring. The green gives it sort of an army surplus vibe, and I’m planning on treating it as a neutral colour (even though it’s not really).