Hello! Welcome to the first day of the ALD Scorpion Sewalong! I’m Michelle and I’ll be doing a sewalong with our amazing white Scorpion fabric making the Compose pattern and Rachel will be sewing up the Core Tee.
Let me give you a quick breakdown of our schedule, so you can know what to expect.
Day 1: Print and prep fabric
Day 2: Cut fabric
Day 3: Viennese seams and shoulder seams
Day 4: Sleeves and neckband (plus skirt or peplum if you are using those options)
Day 5: Hem
Day 6: Catch up
Day 7: Share!
Since today is Day 1, we are printing the pattern and making sure our fabric is prepped. I always recommend that you prewash and dry your fabric exactly as you plan to care for it in the future. Once you’ve got going on that, we can start looking at getting our pattern ready. I have a projector, so there really isn’t any prep here for me! I hope you do too, projectors are amazing and save SO much prep time. If you don’t, you should get to printing and assembling your pattern so you can be ready to go tomorrow.
Are you going to be blending sizes or adding or subtracting height? Make sure to check out this blog where I review that. Now is also a great time to retake measurements. It’s important to do that for yourself when you’re an adult, but I think it’s even more important when you’re sewing for kids. I swear they grow and change so quickly that the measurement you just took last week may not be quite right anymore! And just like adults, kids come in all shapes and sizes too. My son is 11, but quite small. He wears a size 8 in RTW clothes, but is starting to get a little taller. I almost always have to do some size grading and blending when I sew for him. Don’t worry! There are great directions for how to do just that in every ALD pattern.
Rachel's Day 1:
Prep days are always the easiest and hardest days for me. I use a projector for cutting my patterns, which is the easy part. I just measure myself (or whoever I'm sewing for) and turn off all the sizes I don't need and start cutting. Simple grading I do as I cut, but more elaborate adjustments I make in Inkscape (free) or Affinity Designer (paid). I have more experience with Inkscape so if I'm in a time crunch I use that. I often struggle to pick fabrics, especially for myself: that's the hard part! In fact, this time I created a poll in the ALD Facebook Group to get help. I knew I wanted to pair either the Pink or Purple Scorpions with the White for my top, but I couldn't decide, they all look so great together! Purple won in a landslide, but one commenter suggested I use Laura's Piping Hack to add a splash of pink and I loved that idea.
Do you love hacking patterns to get a little bit of a different look? If so check out all the great hacks on the ALD Blog! You can find Core and Compose hacks in the Athleisure Collection section of the blog and use them during the sew along! If you're sewing along with Michelle and I don't forget to check in on our posts in the main group each day and happy sewing!
Today's entry post is here. Share a picture of today's progress to get entered in for the prize! You have all week to get entries in.