Hello All!
I’ve been wanting to make an outfit from African print fabric for years now. I have to be honest with you, I was afraid because I usually only sew with knits and African print is cotton. I would get anxiety thinking about cutting into my beautiful fabric only to mess it up because the outfit wouldn’t fit correctly. Now that I have been venturing out into sewing with different fabrics, I was comfortable cutting into this African print that I purchased from Fine Fabrics in Commerce GA. Yes, Fine Fabrics now has a location in Commerce GA! Their selection is a little smaller than the one in Norcross GA, but you will still be overwhelmed by how much fabric you can find there.
I immediately fell in love with this print! I was going to use it for a handbag, but then I remembered the photo shoot. Like I said in my previous post, I was unable to attend the photo shoot because of my back. Another fear I had about working with the African print was pretreating it. Sometimes when you pretreat certain fabrics, it loses some of the color and it shrinks. This fabric did not do either, so I was pleasantly surprised!
I found an inspiration photo on Pinterest for the outfit I wanted to make. I used McCall’s 7332 for the vest and Simplicity 8651 for the shorts. I chose view A of M7332 because it is sleeveless, and I added bias binding around the arm hole. The vest is supposed to be lined but I omitted that part because I didn’t want to use all of my fabric.
For S8651, I had to add 2 inches to both side seams because the pattern only goes up to an 18 and my hips are a 22 in pattern size. Next time I will add an inch to the crotch because the shorts were riding a bit in that area. I love this shorts pattern because it only has 3 pattern pieces and a paper bag waist. See you later!
