Tuesday 2 September 2014

Day 54: liftoff!

Today I made one of the most serious decisions of the whole project: what buttons to use. I think this has been knocking quietly on my brain for a while but today I realised I have some vintage (and I mean vintage) big red buttons that will be perfect.











Because I was avoiding the news I decided start sewing. I have over 50 flowers and nothing to sew them on to yet. Oops. 

Have you ever been held up on a project because you haven't been able to get past some minor hurdle? Then when you make yourself do whatever-it-is, it's really easy and takes about 5 minutes? So it was with the opening flaps. But wait! It was to be a night where nothing was easy. Somehow I've managed to lose my supersized reel of red cotton. Not a problem, I thought, I have lots of red cotton. Wrong. There's every shade of pink you can imagine in the thread tin but no red. Fortunately there was some of the right red left on a bobbin and I found a dark red that's close enough, at least for the wool seams. This meant topstitching the flaps with the bobbin thread showing (because it was the right colour). It's not ideal but never mind. 



















So onto the seams. I only had time for the front seam that attached the side front to the centre front. I finished the first long, difficult seam only to find out that the bobbin thread - you know, the thread that's the right colour - had run out about 3 inches into the seam. So there went another bunch of time.

The seam is shown below. You'll notice the curve is closely clipped. It really is worthwhile taking the trouble to clip seams when they're curved because they sit much better. If it's a jacket from I usually do this (from this helpful webpage):














Yes it takes time but so does anything worth doing.

I haven't overlocked the edges because the cape will be fully lined so no raw edges will show. Plus the seams are wide (1 inch and 1.5cm) and overlocking just adds to the bulk. Tomorrow I'll scuttle down to the local stitch 'n' bitch and get the RIGHT THREAD!



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