Designing Woes

I've been designing two garments at the moment. One, is a knitted tank top. The other is a sewn sundress. I've hit pitfalls on both so far. It's kind of discouraging, but I must persevere (my inner-masochist won't let me quit). First, let's look at the tank top:

This take one. I worked it on Size 5's in the rnd. I chose ribbing for the bottom part thinking that it would help alleviate the need to decrease for waistshaping and help make it more form fitting. I tried it on at the point you see you here. It doesn't look bad. But it doesn't look good. The bottom edge fits alright, but the ribbing wasn't doing a good job with waistshaping. So I frogged back into the ribbing and started knitting on Size 3's thinking that the change in needle size would shape the waist, again, w/o having to dec sts. Wrong. I'm decreasing stitches now on Size 5's. We'll see how that works. I'm getting bored with this. I think it's time to move onto to something I have a little more confidence in finishing before the season is over.

Enter, the sundress.

This is take two on the pattern pieces. The first try I didn't give myself any ease, and I realized rather quickly that a skintight garment wasn't what I was going for. Luckily, I only cut out one piece. I had enough fabric to make up for the mistake, but just enough. I can't afford anymore. But I'm confident now. I have the pieces cut out and I drafted some directions so I don't f-up the sewing step. One of the major reasons why I love knitting more than sewing is that knitting is very forgiving when it comes to errors. Made a mistake? No problem, just unravel and try again. No harm done. But with sewing, you have limited fabric, you cut or sew wrong, you're pretty much screwed. Maybe I'm just not creative enough. Who knows.

ETA for the Sundress- sometime midweek. (i hope).