Colette Violet

After a lot of hesitation I cut into my gorgeous fabric I got for my birthday…

I decided to make it into a Colette Violet, one of the patterns I got for my birthday.

I don’t know where my head was at when I decided on the size to cut out, but it must have been lightyears away… I cut a size 12 while my actual size would be a 6… But I think I know where I went wrong.

You see, my actual bustsize is 32″, which would be a size 6. But my RTW European size is 40, so I was looking at the table on the back of the pattern and I saw the number 40 and I must have thought “Oh, so I have to make a size 12”. This didn’t seem odd to me, because I have a Karen Millen dress that fits me perfectly and that dress is a UK size 12… Circumstancial confusion…

Fortunately I made a muslin first, something I usually never do, but because I love this fabric soooo much and I really didn’t want to ruin it and because it cost a lot of money and because there were a lot of sheets left behind in the appartment we just bought, I decided to make a trial version first. I thought it was really big, but it didn’t occur to me that it was not the pattern but me. So I replaced the darts, removed width from the front and removed width from the back, and on top of that I took in the side seams about 4 cm each… I guess there were enough signs there to know something was wrong… I just didn’t see it…

The fabric is gorgeous but a real pain to sew. It is a silk-poly blend, but my machine handled it really really well. (I changed the needle to a 60, and tested different types of stitches to see what worked best. Did I mention I really didn’t want to ruin this fabric?) The only thing that made it really nerve-wrecking was that when I put a pin in or when I was sewing my buttonholes, something happened to the threads of the fabric and I got tiny little white stripes. But you have to be really close by to see it, so it doesn’t really matter.

Too bad for the little white stripes 😦

I inserted three times three buttonholes placed together and used buttons with 3 different shades of the same color. It’s just a small detail, and maybe I’m the only one who notices, but I love it. I got the idea for the grouped buttonholes from the Colette-website, the ombre-effect buttons idea is all mine.

I like the result, it is not the best it could have been, but those who don’t know about my stupidity confusion, won’t notice…