The Great Fayma F**k Up

Sliding into Sunday today with an absolute disaster of a project which I thought I would share to demonstrate it's not all sunshine and roses on the sewing front!

Also just noticed the bird is upside down!

 You made have seen pattern company Fayma (who are also now Hobbycraft Made to Measure) - you take a load of your own body measurements, along with some photographs for analysis, and a 'made to measure' pattern is created. 

Lovely job - so I thought. I didn't expect it to be a perfect fit, but a 'good enough' fit to tweak would have been alright. This was so far off the mark it was untrue. 

Just for clarity - before I wrote this I had the lovely Fabric Wrangler (and all round sewing Oracle) check my measurements that had been input, and they were all fine.

First of all I had a little gripe with the paper wastage. Every single pattern piece is printed separately - even the reverse pieces such as collar, under collar, top collar, another top collar piece. I get that you may need two of everything if measurements differed on your body however the collar piece was formatted across 3 pages of A4 set at 'portrait' when it could have easily fit on 1 page landscape. It's auto-generated pieces so I suppose the layout is a bit how you find it.

I set about cutting a 'wearable toile' from some stash fabric which I envisaged as a nice wafty summer shirt. Immediately we (I was in class at the time) spotted that the yoke was really small so had to extend that by 1/2" each side to extend the shoulder a bit. No big deal.

Then came the back piece. It was a whopping 6 inches too small to fit the yoke. I ended up cutting a stripe of extra fabric and inserting that to fit. Well that went wrong - although I'm not one for bothering to pattern match, a headless bird was even too much for me. 

I then had a 'make it work' moment and created a little back panel for the remnants. 

 Next up was the collar - and there was no way that was fitting (even with endless snips and wrangling) as it was 3" too short so I had to re-draft the collar myself in it's entirety. That should have fit as I hadn't
made any pattern changes to the neckline.

The sleeves actually went in really well so I was hopefully the shirt may be saved at this point.

I popped it on and immediately felt like I was an I.T advisor ready to tell someone to 'switch it on and off again'. Definite Jeff from Accounting vibes. Actually if I popped on a goatee I would have been David Brent. 

It was then I noticed there was some epic 'weirdness' on the back sleeves where they were sticking away from my body like wings. Again, a trip to the Oracle confirmed that it was just plain bizarre and we tried to pin out the shape to at least make the shirt 'one for gardening in'.

Well I think this thing was cursed because as soon as I tried to tidy up the edged my overlocker decided to eat the sleeves and pulled it all under. Out of fabric and out of patience I called time of death on the shirt.

The only part I actually like was the birds anyway, so I set about harvesting the cranes like I was on some kind of conservation project. 

The shirt is now suitable for a bit-part on The Walking Dead and available for audition. The birds are awaiting release back into the wild. 

Where I went wrong I have no idea, and I'm not sure I care either as I won't be making it again. I'd love to read some more reviews of these patterns though. Have you have any experiences?

I do have the Fouette trousers downloaded from Fayma and I'm now nervous to start these! That being said my friend Claire from class had some great success with the Fayma Boyfriend trousers fitting almost straight away. Fingers crossed for the next one.

Update: I made a Melilot Blouse in some fabric from the Hayley Jane Outlet as a kind of 'palette cleaner'. By fluke the colour was a match for the birds!!

 

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