Sub-par Subtraction

Short [fairly short] bulletin.  OK, rant.

It’s not getting any better!  After much fiddle faddle, I unpicked two of the circles and unflipped the bits that had got twisted.  But to no avail.  I cannot for the life of me work out how to get into the thing!  In the videos, Mr Roberts does mention that there are lots of ways to wear any dress made by this method, and it isn’t clear how he sort of scoops it up to drop over his model’s head…his explanation implies that the body goes in and out of the holes, which would mean threading my way through SIX loops inside the dress, hoping they end up in the ‘right’ order.

Do I need to go through any of them?  Some of them?  All of them?  Mathematically, with 6 options, I make that 64 variations.  Jeez.

There isn’t ANY Way through it that I can see, as it abruptly twists into a very very narrow tube just below the bodice area.  I can’t see why, although the top circle on the front did seem to be placed very high up on the layout I copied- maybe that’s it?

The only other reason I can think of is maybe the fact that I laid the bodice pieces askew…which seems fine on the rationale of the method…but the way you join the side seams looks to be random and freeform.  Maybe I randomly managed to find the one bloody variant that does not work?

I can’t find ANY reviews or blogs by anyone that has made this up, although there are student versions here and there on Pinterest and the like, and a lovely one making a child’s dress- but she doesn’t make the holes, just the bodice subtraction.

In desperation, I unpicked the long ‘side’ seam that was sewn first, thinking I could maybe let the thing hang from my shoulders, and work out the problem.  Er, no.  The seam turned out to spiral round and round, making all sorts of detours, and I STILL couldn’t get my torso into it.  I checked all the measurements again, and it really should fit.  I don’t think it’s  a zip issue [especially with the entire long seam released AND the short actual side seams unpicked]

I was rapidly approaching the point of tearing it up, so I left it in favour of a long soak and some biccies.

I stared hard at it.  I unpicked the apparently-problematic top front circles, and let it all droop.  There was a weird pointy bit at the side.  Mathematically, I chopped it off.  It was looking at me funny.

That weird bit, on the right. WHO ARE YOU LOOKING AT?

And tried again, after repinning the long tube seam.  Which now seemed about 8″ too long.  Don’t look at me.

Nope.  Big nope.  Big BIG nope.

The seaming on this fabric looks GREAT.  The way it’s pouching and hanging is making me really really want to wear the damn thing, but there’s no way it’s garment shaped.  Unless you’re  a stick insect.  Which is MADNESS -the bust is cut on the bias and a GOOD 44″, plenty big enough.  The fabric was originally 60″ wide. I used nearly 4m of it, and the bloody thing is SLEEVELESS.

At LEAST 44″ across the bust, with the front not smoothed out.

And look at those lovely swooshing curved seams!

 AAARGH!

I could chop the top off, and abandon it to being a mere skirt, but that kind of defeats the object of the whole convoluted process.

The only other thing I can think of is to face the horror of unpicking EVERYTHING, and start assembly again, watching like a hawk for which stage of the assembly made it suddenly shrink to giraffe neck proportions…

Bollocks.

I think I need to unpick don’t I?