Why I skipped my birthday dress

Look at that sweater! Sewing doesn't get any easier than that! Just what I was thinking when I started working on a fitness outfit. Quick project, could easily be finished in an evening or two and then over to making a glorious birthday dress. To speed things up I skipped making a muslin.

Clever thinking, Mrs Foxgloves. What went wrong? I used a Knipmode pattern (KM 1510-13) in my usual size 48. It looked a bit big, but as I wanted to wear it as a layering piece it didn't worry me too much.

When I looked at the technical drawing I assumed it was rather short. Something to do with the over all proportions, and the sleeves looking longer than the bodice...so I added 6 cm extra length. Huge mistake! I was completely misreading the shape. It looked almost wider than long but it was not caused by the sweater being short, but by it being extremely wide! Not too worry, as a commenter on Instagram said: look at the bright side, it isn't too small!

After some chopping and going down two sizes I had another wadder.

Was this thing growing overnight? I recut again. Luckily there was so much excess fabric that I could just cut off all serged seams again, including the raglan seams. I finally ended up with something wearable, but I made three sweaters to get there. Waste of time de luxe. I equally blame the pattern, my own bad judgement and the fabric, which is a very soft, lightweight cotton/poly knit.

I attached the cowl neck twice on the final garment. Brilliant. Depending on how the cowl is worn you see the seam on the inside or the outside of the garment. The only way to get a clean finish both ways was by using French seams. On a very unstable knit. Holy cow, it never stopped!

That'll have to do. I finished my sweatshirt this morning, twenty minutes before my first serious fitness training in well over three years. I recently did some try-outs and my back and various other protesting body parts were finally holding up fine, so my return to the gym was planned for the first Monday in November. Wait, that's my birthday! As you can guess by now I didn't even start sewing my birthday dress. Well, who cares. It's the perfect day to start working on my health again and I'm very grateful to be able to reach a new level of exercise. I enrolled for a year of training and I'm wondering where I'll stand same time next year. I hope to rebuild my strength and, if possible, regain my former shape and size. And look, who needs a birthday dress when you can have a party in the gym???

It'll be quite a journey, for me as well as for my trainer. Cause I'm such a natural ;) See?