What Iffing

I love this blog post!  And I love her phrase 'what iffing' even more.  It is delightful and quite wonderful.  Exactly my cup of tea because that's how I think too.

The blogger is writing about the Vogue shrug pattern V8721 that I am interested in.  I love the way she discards the instructions when it doesn't make any sense to not sew the lower piece to the lining and then attach both to the rest (oh yes, so much easier) - and even better to eliminate a seam when you don't need that one either.

I am thinking of making this shrug myself:

I like how this apes the shape of a knitted shrug at the back and that the slot for the arm is horizontal.

I am thinking of changing the front centre though.  I want a shrug that exposes the lovely seed bead embroidery on my Christmas party dress, wearing this shrug with it just as it is would just show an expanse of plain velvet, nothing more.  That's not what I'm after.

I could keep either the top one or two buttons and then cut a sweep towards the hem or even towards the bottom of the side seam.  Well, where the side seam would be if it had a conventional side seam I should say.

Which means that I'm not just the person to discard nonsensical instructions, but the one who insists on messing up the design lines as well.

Well.

I guess the only way to find out whether this could work is to give it a try!

I can pop both the dress and a made-up muslin onto my dressmaking dummy and see how I need to draw this new edge to achieve the effect I want.  How hard can it be? (I'm already sure that that's got to be 'famous last words')


'What iffing'. I like that.