Hacking the Freya Pattern

I ordered this book over the summer:

The patterns include a knot-front top (the Joni top and dress, on the cover), and I wanted to see how Tilly designed and constructed her version. I might still make hers, although I think the construction is a bit fiddly. She has written her patterns for assembling on a sewing machine, so I have to make a few adjustments to do them on the serger. Along the way, though, I got distracted by the Freya pattern, which is a simple top with several neckline and length variations. I’ve spent the last couple of days tracing that pattern in both top and dress lengths. I made up a muslin in the top. That was educational.

The Freya top is a simple set-in sleeve top that nips in at the waist. The Rhapso-T by Zede and Mallory Donahue is very similar. I made up a muslin of the Rhapso-T and wasn’t thrilled with the way it fit, but learning about the boob bump adjustment was more than worth the price of that pattern. All of the T-shirts and tunics I’ve made since then, however, lack any waist shaping. That’s not because I don’t have a waistline. On the contrary—I have a defined hourglass figure, but after making up the first iteration of the Freya pattern, I realized that the reason I didn’t like the Rhapso-T was because accentuating my waistline makes my bust look bigger by comparison. My bust is big enough. It doesn’t need additional help.

[I buy lengths of knit fabrics on clearance for my muslins, which is better than wasting good garment knits for testing.]

Is there a happy medium? I re-traced the Freya top, but I graded out the waistline a bit. I also, as expected, had to lengthen the pattern. I’ll make up another muslin and see what I think. It would be nice to have a little shaping. If I can come up with a Freya top pattern that I like, I’ll make the dress version in one of the heavier knits in the stash.

I also examined the sleeve shaping on the Freya pattern and compared it to my Liz Claiborne knockoff top pattern. I actually know quite a bit about sleeve shaping, having had to learn the relationship between armscye and cap shaping in great detail as a knitting designer. (One of my favorite stories is that of designer Norah Gaughan using calculus to work out her sleeve shapings. That is dedication.) The sleeves on the Freya are a bit wider than the ones on my knockoff top, I cannot stand to have sleeves flopping around (or bracelets, or lacy cuffs, or anything else on my wrists that gets in my way), so I narrowed the Freya sleeves accordingly.

This is all a process. And I will get back to other sewing (and quilting) soon.

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Joann Fabrics is a hot mess—both locally and at the corporate level—and I am wondering how long it’s going to last. Hobby Lobby really is their only big-box competition at the moment, and our HL has a relatively small fabric department compared to Joanns.

[Yes, we should all shop at our local fabric stores. I do, but until the quilt stores start carrying garment fabrics, I have to visit Joann Fabrics.]

Joann’s biggest problem was their point-of-sale system, which they have begun upgrading, finally. Entering remnants used to be a multi-step process of entering the regular price, the sale price, the discount, and the yardage of the remnant in order to get it to ring up properly. Overall, the system was as slow as molasses in January. Coupons didn’t always work.

The new system is not without its problems, however. I have learned to watch the prices ring up, because items that are tagged as being on sale on the floor will ring up at full price at the register. I keep coupons on my phone, but if the store has the old POS system, I have to go into my phone and toggle a switch so that the coupons will work. If they have the new system, I have to have the switch toggled the other way. The old system would e-mail my receipts to me. The new system does not, although I’ve been told it will in the future.

The website is an inventory nightmare. For some reason, they insist on showing fabrics that are no longer available either in the stores or for shipping. If they took their out-of-stock merchandise off the website in a timely manner, it would make searching for needed items much simpler.

At the checkout registers yesterday, I was the second person in line. There was one cashier working all by herself. (It was the poor lady from Texas who forgot to give me my bag of thread last week.) The customer in front of me was buying discounted Christmas merchandise and had two carts stuffed full of items, all of which had to be scanned individually. I knew they were short on staff, so I waited, but some of the eight people in line weren’t so patient. One lady demanded to know why the cashier didn’t call for help. The cashier apologized profusely and said there were only three of them working—one at the cut counter, one at the register, and one who was on her lunch break. Truly, it wasn’t her fault and there was nothing she could do. I thought she handled the situation with grace and humor. It’s a first-world problem, for sure, to have to wait in line at a fabric store.