A Wadder

Here's a project from over a month ago that was a complete failure from start to finish.

In the fall, I made a huge order from Girl Charlee.  You know how it goes - you already have $70 worth of fabric in your cart and free shipping starts at $99, so you add a couple more things . . .  This is one of the fabrics I was most excited about:

I ordered two yards, like I always do.  When my order came though, there was only one yard, and a note saying that the fabric was damaged and that I had been credited for the other yard.  Damaged is right:  even the piece I got had a chunk torn out of it:

Well, what can a person do with one yard?  Not a lot!  And not only that, but the fabric turned out to be much stiffer and less elastic than I'd expected.  So it sat.

Then in January I got my February issue of Burda magazine, and got really excited about a raglan-sleeved tee shirt with gathered sleeves.  I decided to combine this fabric and some of my leftover stretch lace to make the top.  I even decided to up my game and finally buy some ball-point pins.

I usually love raglan styles on me, and I found the gathered sleeve piece so interesting that I took a picture of it:

The pattern instructions say to sew up the side seams first, then the sleeve seams, and then gather the raglan edges and set them into the body of the top.  I decided to go the other way around, and gather and sew the raglans first and then do the sleeve and side seam all in one.  My lace is pretty thick, which made sewing the gathered edges to the jersey pretty difficult.

Still, it only took me a couple hours to make.  And then I tried it on and . . . blech.

In the month and a half since I made this, I've seen a lot of very lovely versions on BurdaStyle.  It took me a while to figure out why, but there are a lot of reasons this pattern is a no-go for me.  And I'm confident that it's not just my poor fabric choice (again) because I actually made this top a second time - that one went straight to the Goodwill pile.

I made the smallest size.  It "fits" across the bust, but the armholes are way too deep for me.  The binding piece is a little too long (although I shortened it), so it poofs out from my hollow upper chest:

But the main problem for me is the design, I've decided.  The raglans I like on me angle up toward the shoulder and tend to have a smaller neck opening.  This one angles in toward the center of the chest (more like a very wide saddle shoulder) and has a wide yet shallow neck opening.    Because I have a hollow upper chest to begin with, and because the "girls" have succumbed to the forces of gravity and migrated south of where they originally lived, I feel like this design makes me look even hollower and flatter than I am.  Not. Happy. About. That.

OK, I'm not actually as bummed out as I look.  This one is also going to Goodwill, and I'm hoping someone will see it and like it enough to take it home.   I think it's very interesting that a slight change in angle can make a style that usually works for me into one that doesn't.  The shape of my body has changed over the last year or two, so I feel like I'm in the process of discovering what styles flatter it to its best advantage.   I tried out something different - and it didn't work!  No big deal - on to the next thing!