Thursday, January 29, 2009

One more nail in the coffin...

Let's put this week to rest. Let's declare it dead and gone. Let's put it into the far back memory portion of our brains, and then quickly forgetaboutit.

So one more nail in the coffin of this week happened to me this afternoon. I began sewing my costumes for the third play of the month (the last in the three week continuous run of plays). I needed to make a priest cassock.

The priest is the main character in this play, who is on stage throughout the entire show, so he should look somewhat authentic. At times, he tries to be Harry Houdini, and attempts to get himself out of a straight jacket, so he needs some room in his cassock to go through all this commotion.

Butterick still has a pattern for a priest's cassock in their pattern book. Most stores that I checked don't have the pattern because it is pretty old. But I did find it a couple of weeks ago at a pattern store far away. Confident as always that things were in order, I got ready to make the cassock.

Butterick, you have failed me for the first time. I love your patterns and your cut of patterns. I can rely on you for being true to what size you say the pattern is going to be. This doesn't always work out that way with other pattern companies. But as I unwrapped the tissues in the pattern, I discovered that a big chunk of the pattern was missing, including the sleeves, collar and entire back.

I discovered the sleeve issue right away, but thought I had the back issue solved. Not so, as I tried to put it together, I found that I had cut two sets of side backs and no real back! This would have made the equivalent of a strapless back gown for the priest! I'm thinking this isn't the look we're going for! I could fake the sleeves, but how to fake the back?

So I was lucky and did find the same pattern at the closest fabric store. I am going to try to rig the back by piecing that part that is incorrect, and hope it works out OK. If not, then I bought another piece of black to make another cassock.

Could anything more go wrong this week? Unfortunately, I have two more days to live through, so the answer is "yes". I'm wishing I could stay beneath the covers until Sunday, to try to ward off any more evil spirits. I'd better watch what I wish for, because I could end up in bed with the flu or something dastardly like that.

Tell that black cloud to move on to someone else's house, OK?

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