Body Suit Mock Up Finished

OR: My First Clown Suit.

In order to familiarize myself not only with my new machine, but also with the variety of fabrics out there and how they behave, I decided to make a body suit from a commercially available pattern. You know, just a "get your feet wet" project.

I finished it last night. I should say, I got to a point where I have learned all I need to learn from it, as there are in fact a couple of details left undone.



Here's a close up of the back.



As you can see, it's made with a variety of fabrics, in all different colors. This was on purpose, though is not meant to reflect what the final product will look like. Just wanted to get a feel for different fabrics, and this is what I had onhand.

The thing I really still need to get ahold of is the feeding of the fabric into the machine. It tends to stretch the fabric right when it is putting the stitch in, so you end up with some wonkiness. I tried to account for that, but at the end of the day, I was not entirely successful. I've found a few tips on how to reduce or minimize this, which I will be exploring in my next effort.

The other thing I really need to do is develop my own pattern that will work for my needs. As mentioned, the suit pictured here is from an off the shelf pattern. And though it has the sleeves that I want and the right collar (in shape, though not size) it has seams in the wrong place, and a zipper in the front. I will for sure need to make my own pattern, though I intend to borrow heavily from the one I purchased.

I am also going to start a list of "lessons learned" from my experiences, so that I can refer back to them. Kind of like my "project links" post, this is something I will continually update and refer back to. I need to write them all down because otherwise I will lose track of the discoveries I have made along the way.

I had posted earlier about my trials and tribulations surrounding getting my new sewing machine to work properly with the stretch fabric. And while there are still some complications to be ironed out, one of the key contributors to my success was the right thread. For my own reference, here is the stuff I picked up at Jo-Ann's that works really well.