Monday musings, or can this project be saved?

in which our plucky heroine confronts a dilemma...

Life can get equally unbalanced if there is not enough home time to take care of ordinary tasks and chores as if there is not enough time to have fun and be social. It was a very social weekend, and while that was good, it left me feeling rather odd.

:::

My current SWAP/6PAC sewing project, the brown/indigo dress, is not being at all cooperative. The "dress" when initially stitched together, did not feel at all comfortable, probably because rather than do all the measuring and layout to figure out how to cut the small amount of available cloth, I simply took the measurements that I'd written down earlier and used those. From probably at least fifteen years and x number of pounds ago. Not the most clever thing to do, and now am trying to salvage the already cut and stitched material to make into something that is wearable, because the fabric is wonderful.

Instead, have done some serious frankenpatterning with my other various TNT patterns, to come up with a bodice and sleeves that can make use of the already partially stitched together pieces while wasting as little of the fabric as possible. The bodice and sleeves required piecing together bits of the remaining fabric, and making a virtue of necessity, the new design will use more of the taupe/indigo fabric for the sleeves and a hem band; the style is a sort of faux pinafore + underdress.

Several years ago my pal Stacy brought me a gift from her trip to Japan, a small length of fabric printed with all the native Japanese dog breeds. I decided that since the colors are a wonderful accent to this project, including a few small decorative patches would be fun; the main fabric of the dress is also Japanese cotton.

First the patch is stitched to backing fabric, then the backing fabric is basted behind the center back, then additional bias strips stitched down from the front to anchor the whole shebang. The bias strips will also be used to bind the neckline, sleeve details and hemline.

:::