Cart and I finally manage to translate the hieroglyphs from the cartamodella (template) when we went to a shop that sells zips and buttons and other finishings. There happened to be a lady-customer that has her own sewing shop and kindly, she showed us how to read the cartamodella. It was quite easy once you’ve got a hang of it.
I’ve already decided on making this skirt.
So happily Cart and I went to a fabric shop which was not too far away and chose some fabrics for my skirt. By the way, FYI shops in Italy tend to be precise. If you need a pair of tailor’s scissors for example, you need to buy them in a specific shop. Or if you need a tracing paper, you need to go to another shop. Even for my car if I have tyre issues I need to visit a gommista for electrical issues an elettrauto etc. I’ve never come across an all-in-one.
Anyway, I told the lady that since I’m just a beginner and am just practising, I don’t want a too expensive fabric. She nodded her head and kept saying, “Si si, capisco”. So I was lulled in a false sense of security. I chose a beautiful brown and light brown fabric, which I thought would look simple, but elegant.
But just before she started to cut the fabric, Cart quickly and wisely asked, “Wait! How much is this?”
To make a long story short, 3.5 meters of the georgette fabric costs 70 euro. My heart sank and I was close to leaving the store. 70 euro for a skirt is rather costly. We were in central Rome not too long back and I was amazed at the prices of the fabrics. But since we were in the city centre, I thought that the prices would normally be jacked up.Thus I couldn’t believe that the price would be like that in the residential area too.
Even the material for making one of my wedding outfits didn’t cost that much. But of course, things costs differently in different parts of the world.
But Cart decided to buy the fabric for me as a gift, which was nice of him. And we had an interesting evening tracing the cartamodella and then cutting the fabric itself. It’s like … +10 exp!!! And in the end, we had 4 separate pieces of cloth that we were supposed to sew together.
But I did a quick stitch before sewing it proper to have a quick preview of it like how my mum tends to do it and this is what happened.
Hmm. Something isn’t right here. How could this be? We followed the entire instructions correctly. In fact, it’s supposed to be very loose even as I’m a size 42 and the template we were using were for 44 (the smallest)
Meh! Suffice to say that I’m giving up on this hobby for now as it’s a tad too expensive for a housewife. And I’m not the only one who is stunned by the prices, even friends from other parts of Italy shared me stories of how costly their materials are for their sewing experiments.
For the moment, I’ll change my game plan : To buy clothes from thrift shops and from bancarelle and adjust it to fit me ala NDAD. I think that makes more cents (geddit geddit?) :p