What did I tell you?

If you'll recall, when I posted about how I was going to start sewing, I predicted that Topher would "help." Here it is, the photographic proof! Coincidentally, it's also photographic proof that he is one gorgeous boy! His markings are what made me pick him out of the litter, and he's grown up into a rugged example of tomcattery.

Anyway, it doesn't help that the pieces for these pants are so big that I had to put the cutting board on the floor... no way it was going to fit on my kitchen table. So there I am, sitting on the floor, putting tissue paper on cardboard! This is absolutely a place that Topher must be, because tissue paper and cardboard are his two favorite things in life. When he wasn't sitting right on top of the project, as seen here, he was sitting on the empty end of the board, swatting my hand as I tried to pin things down. And as you can see from his expression in the photo, he wasn't the least bit ashamed of himself.

That was only one of the problems that faced me with making these pants. First of all, measurements and sizes. WTH, Simplicity? According to my waist measurements, I'd need to cut out something like a size 20 to fit my waist. To get an idea of how patently ridiculous that is, here's my picture from Ren Faire 2007. Oh yeah, and by my hip measurements... I'd need a size 10. *sigh* Thank you, Simplicity, for rubbing in the fact that I have decidedly unwomanly hips. Since my particular instance of this pattern only goes up to a size 10, that's what I'm cutting out. I seem to recall from my Mom sewing my wedding dress that their measurement/size charts tend to be grossly inaccurate, so I suspect these pants will be too big. This is why I'm starting out with the cheapest fabric I bought!

And speaking of cheap fabric... As you can see, my fabric is very pretty. It's also very soft. If they turn out, these will be wonderful Summer pants. However, it's also terribly unevenly cut. You'd think that after spending 10-15 minutes in line to get my fabric, I could at least get some straight fabric. I didn't realize just how uneven it was until I was over halfway done pinning everything down, and realized that with how it was laid out, I was never going to be able to cut these pants out. That realization came at 12:20am, and this was the point where I said "To heck with this, I'll try again some other time."

That some other time will probably be tomorrow. Wish me luck!