So today I worked on the sleeves. It has to have been one of the most frustrating days ever. Since we've adjusted the panel that joins the back to the front and made it a lot smaller of course the sleeves from the original pattern no longer work but because we made the panel smaller we've taken out a fair amount of movement room as well. I think I have to cut the arm hole deeper under the pit area since I can't take away anymore fabric at the shoulder.
I bought another suit jacket pattern on Saturday which I cut out today as well and put a mock up together. I have a better understanding of how the whole thing *should* work but I couldn't set the sleeve in properly. I spent a lot of time today cutting paper and muslin. To what end I don't really know. Mostly I don't really know what I am doing and I find that this fear of fucking it up royally is making me less inclined to just go for it and leads to more I can't do this speeches being yelled at who ever will listen. Emotional artist in the house.
I got the 3rd pattern mock up done with 1 sleeve, then get M to try it on and he waves his arms around like a man doing the chicken dance to test his range of arm motion is definitely reduced. This makes me annoyed because I don't know how to fix it and I decided I had had enough. I don't know where the problem exactly is and of course neither does he. But then he tried on a regular jacket and he has the SAME amount of motion room so really it's his chicken dance not the sleeve. I tried to explain to him, he doesn't do sports in his suits why would he do sports and massive amounts of arm waving in this? Imperial officers mostly stand around looking cool with their arms behind their backs. This led to an argument which led to him banging pots around in the kitchen loudly and me looking online for solutions. Instead I took solace of some VERY badly made imperial officer uniforms and took on renewed hope that I can do this better, if I try hard enough. Over a decent glass of wine and a nice supper we called a truce and discussed how to proceed.
So we'll stick with the 1st pattern and the 2nd try and I will try to fux about with the sleeve pattern some more to get it to set in properly and make some more room for his shoulder upper arm.
Then the fun begins because then I need to figure out the side pockets and the front panel and the skirt bits. I'm pretty sure that once I get through this learning curve I will have a much better understanding of how this works but really at the moment all I want to do is burn everything and cry.
Instead we watched a lot of TV and a dear friend sent me a gift certificate for books ( unrelated to the sewing problem)
I have some photos of the problems but I'll upload later. Right now I want to go to bed and sleep off the frustration and maybe take a new look at it tomorrow.
