"The Recession Recess Romper Project" Status Report....No Bueno!

Ok, so I was having some serious project remorse with this thing on Saturday, I still sort of am. For some reason I am very attracted to fabrics that have diagonal motifs. This particular McCall pattern did not say that it is "Unsuitable" for diagonals so I thought all would be well....how wrong I was. It took me the better part of the weekend to get the pieces cut out....now I understand why I always hear allow extra yardage for matching. Seriously it took me almost 2 yards to cut out 8 pattern pieces! I kept telling myself the fabric was on sale, this is a good learning exercise, if you screw up there is more at the store and oh yeah, it was on sale.

I looked up the section on cutting out diagonals in the Vogue sewing book and it recommended plenty of extra yardage and cutting the pieces out single thickness. This may be why it took me all day Saturday and half the day Sunday to actually cut all the pieces out. There was a lot of second guessing and re-checking...it was total insanity. I was in such a state of distress by Sunday that I marked only the shorts pieces and constructed that part completely just to see if it would even be worth constructing the bodice.....Well I was pleasantly surprised! The shorts look great.

If I really look close and study the lines there are some areas where the lines don't quite match perfectly, like where there is darting, but when on the body it is not noticeable. Which is exactly what the Vogue book said anyway, that lines tend to look different draped on the body, there are so many lines going in all directions that a few misaligned lines blend right in......

However, the bodice is another story entirely, there are no pictures as of yet because there is no bodice constructed yet....after my great success with the shorts I dove right in to the bodice construction. I had already made the decision to use a contrasting fabric for the facing.....see how the facing flips over and shows at the front in the illustration at right? I knew that trying to get those diagonals lined up correctly would be a nightmare, plus I thought a solid block of color right there would be a nice break from all the crazy lines all over the rest of the romper. So I am going to do the facing in red and I am also going to make the straps out of something red, I am toying with the idea of some kind of ribbon. Anyway, my issue with the bodice is the darts.....They are so huge, a total of 4 1/2" across the bottom, that it completely skews the diagonals....sending them in all sorts of crazy directions....I spent all night troubleshooting this and finally reached the conclusion that I am either going to have to live with the wonky results or I am going to have to take drastic measures.

I can draft out the darts but I think this will have an adverse affect on the fit. I can use a completely different fabric for the top, say plain red and then face with the diagonal and have a two toned romper. I don't like either of these and the potential outcomes so tonight I am going to put it all together as is and see if I can live with the results....If I can't at least the fabric was on sale, the shorts will work out solo and I learned a valuable lesson....diagonals are an advanced application and I might not ever use a diagonal again, ever!