I have a two and a half day lead on my #nanowrimo2021 project, which is a 2021 Astrological Almanac. I was supposed to be up to 28,000 words today, and instead I’m at 32,000 words. I’ve learned a lot about the astrology of next year, and a lot about how to write an almanac (and how not to write one. This year had a steep learning curve. Next year’s will be a lot better, I suspect. But more on that when it actually launches.) I plan to start selling it around December 14, so watch this space for purchasing options (which will basically be digital).
But I was far enough ahead that I was able to get into the studio, iron up a rectangle of cloth, and chop them diagonally from one corner to the opposite one, and then convert those two right triangles into a single isosceles triangle, with a single seam down the middle of the triangle from point to base. This triangle is going to go into the shirt-body, between the bottom of my armscye and the lower hem of the shirt — so that there’s space inside the shirt for my belly, alas.
There’s not much to show here. It was a matter of cutting the triangle, marking a half-inch seam allowance, along the straight sides, pinning them up, and back-stitching along the seam allowance. I didn’t even get as far as the felling stitches to seal the seam, or hemming stitch to finish the corners. And I have to make another one of these gores… and then I have four seams to sew again, back-stitches and felling stitches, and then hemming all the way around, and those little reinforcement patches on the weak bits. There’s still a LOT of work to do before I can even think about attaching the sleeves. And I hadn’t even planned to make these triangles at all when I set out to hand-sew a shirt.
The things we do for love of sewing.
You can read the earlier parts of this project here, which was inspired by Bernadette Banner’s YouTube tutorial on how to make this sort of shirt.