The Magenta dress lives! Now with mystery!

I don't want to jinx it, but we may be *almost* finished with the dining room. We pulled the painter's tape off last night and it looks pretty good. Need to cut in again in a few places, but overall I'm very happy with the result. All our painting (and painting... and painting... and painting...) finally paid off. Still need to paint the upper tier of the tray ceiling, but that's for Beau to do. I'm in charge of cleanup, which shouldn't take me too much longer. I've also spoken with my Beau's mother (who is currently keeping the furniture for us) and we should be getting the furniture in sometime soon. Very excited to have a place to put the china.

Next painting project is the sewing room! Yay! We used to have a roommate in that room, but she moved out and I've decided to claim the room for sewing and crafting. I'll also be moving my computer in there so Beau can have the office all to himself. Still trying to decide on colors though. I really only like to use the low or no VOC paints because paint smell makes me gag and I'm not super keen on inhaling toxic fumes. This sort of limits us on the color. This room also has a tray ceiling so I'm still debating on what colors I want to go with. I want the room to be fun and creative, a place for me to get my artsy on.

I'm debating between yellow walls with shades of red for the tray (very fung shui) or lavender walls with a warm green for the ceiling. Probably going to go with lavender. I love the color yellow, but as wall paint it tends to make things look like an office building. NOT the idea I'm going for here.

In any case it was back to the failed magenta dress this evening... Chalk this one up to my own stupidity again. I am so not a 38 bust, I still have no idea what I was thinking when I started it.

Soooooo.... First step. Unpin old pattern. Check. Next step, choose new pattern. I went and scrounged through a bunch of patterns and narrowed it down to these two patterns.

I went with 5616 because it's a much better fit for jersey. 4426 says you can use jerseys, but I am not making button holes in a stretchy fabric. Seriously? Buttons and cuffed sleeves with jersey... Not happening. So I picked the top left view of 5616. The collar is detachable, but I'm debating just sewing it on. It looks much cuter with the collar anyways. 

I'd never opened the pattern before and when I first peeked inside I was pretty sure it was still factory folded.

I was really excited to find that not only had this pattern had been used, but it was in GREAT condition. This pattern came from a lot at an estate sale. Whoever the previous owner was she was an excellent seamstress and very protective of her patterns. Every pattern of hers that I have opened (from a lot of 41) has had all the pieces and everything has been very carefully folded. This one was no exception and was neatly folded and returned to the envelope.

Bless you previous owner, whoever you were! This pattern is practically brand new and it's getting close to 50 years old! Even the instructions are barely yellowed.  So after quickly checking to make sure there was enough magenta jersey left I went to work. This jersey came in a 52 inch width so lining up the pattern was pretty easy. Did I ever mention how much I love jersey? The lady seamstress had also made the dress. The other parts of the pattern (jacket and skirt) were divided from the large sheet, but otherwise untouched. 

As I started to pin I began to notice some of this lady's alterations. She had shrunken and extended several parts of the pattern. Here you can see her alterations to the facing.

And the shoulder of the front of the dress.

And the back of the dress

But She only altered and cut out around the shoulder areas. As you can see here she stopped cutting around the pieces about halfway through the sleeve shaping. She obviously did something with these pattern pieces as her original pin holes are still visible.

Well, this pattern was a 32 bust. And all her other patterns were a 34 bust, obviously her size or the size of whoever she regularly sewed for. I also happened to know that there was a duplicate of this in with her patterns. So I fished it out.

As I suspected, the second pattern was a 34 bust. So my first inclination was that the pattern was not sized properly and she had to go back and pick it up in a smaller size. So I started rummaging through the 34 envelope, the pieces also very carefully folded.

My first inclination was wrong. In this pattern she had cut out all the pieces for the jacket and skirt, but nothing for the blouse/dress.

So I'm slightly baffled. The best I can figure is that she used the shoulders with a different bodice and traced them or she stopped halfway through the construction of the dress. I searched the instruction sheets for notes, but found nothing.

I've decided to go ahead and give it a go with her alterations though. I figure it couldn't hurt and the slope of the shoulder looks nicer than the original cut. So I'm trusting you Unknown Seamstress, hopefully you won't lead me astray. And the way I figure is that if it doesn't come out right, I'll just fudge it.