Thoughts on the second episode of Project Runway from last night – I love that they gave them a pregnancy garment challenge! Even though I have never been pregnant, my problem with maternity wear is that it always looks too babydoll-ish. Just because a woman is pregnant does not mean that she does not want to look or feel sexy. I feel that a lot of maternity wear out there takes the sex appeal away from a woman. That being said, while the winning design was beautifully designed and made by Shirin, it was too girlish in my opinion:

The design that I would prefer to wear is the jersey gown designed by Althea. She did a great job of highlighting the pregnant form while also making the body appear slimmer. The fabric color was beautiful and I also LOVED the way she accentuated the lower back (very slimming). My only recommendation was that she ad a bit more fabric to the bust. While most women want to show off the breasts they never had during their pregnancy, there is a such thing as too much.  What did you guys think about the designs?

On another note, I took a day off from working on the pencil skirt because of the zipper dilemma. I’m pretty sure that because of the thickness of the folds in the fabric, a machine stitch is pretty much out of the question. My fear is that it will appear sloppy and that just won’t work on a tailored skirt. I am going to try a blind hand-stitch and see how it goes. I like the idea of not being able to see the zipper seam on the outside of the garment. Details to follow…

I finally get to place the decorative waistband, which is something I have been looking forward to very much. There isn’t a how-to guide for something like this; it just takes some strategic placing and a lot of creativity. To do this, I placed the skirt onto the dress form inside out so the band could be properly pinned to the garment.

After making a few adjustments to the waistband and then trying the garment on, I stay-stitched the band into place. I don’t believe that this was an absolutely necessary step but I didn’t want it to slip out of place (better safe than sorry!).

Normally, I would opt for a machine stitch but the fabric overlapped a few times in the ruffle, which made it extremely thick. My fear was that I would break the machine needle. So, I decided on a simple hand stitch. I am very pleased with how it turned out:

Once the band was stitched into place and the pins were removed, I started to work on finishing the inside of the band. The fabric (as you can see) frays terribly. So, I wanted to use a finishing stitch on the machine to prevent further fraying. Big mistake! My initial fear about using a machine stitch was correct. I broke the needle. Stupidity or a right of passage? I’ll go with a right of passage. I decided to give it a rest for the night after the needle deal breaker…

Tonight, episode 2 of the new season of Project Runway. Can’t wait!!