Sleeve Quickie...

Thought you might like to see sleeve lining pinned into place on the jacket before I sew it in by hand.  This way you can actually see something.  If I were to take the picture after it was sewn, you would have a harder time seeing it.  LOL.  See?  I'm being nice and thinking of your eyes.  Speaking of eyes.  I went to the eye doctor the other day for a check up and possibly to get new glasses.  My eyes have been really tired, burn a lot, and water at the weirdest times.  He tells me my right eye hasn't changed prescription but my left eye has decided to be lazy and the right is trying to make up for it, hence really tired eyes most of the time. And he's given me drops for dry eye.  He tells me I'm developing a cataract in my right eye.  So I'll have eye surgery in my future.  I'm told its not a big deal though.  Well enough whining on my part; here is the promised picture of the lining.  LOL.

Later...

I can see the light

At the end of the tunnel...

After tons of hand stitching, (it's a good thing I like handwork) I'm finally coming to the end of the project.  All of the decorative pick stitching is done.  You can see some of it in the picture.   I now have most of the jacket lining installed, completely by hand.  I just have to attach the sleeve linings and do buttons and this coat will be complete.  Here is a picture of the inside of the jacket.   Again, I've lightened the picture considerably to be able to show the details.  Click on the picture to look closer. 

You'll notice a little red feather stitching on the shoulders and back of the neck.  I used a decorative embroidery stitch to hold the folds of the darts down nicely.  I choose red because I had some red silk leftover from another project and the coat really did need a little pick-me-up color-wise.  LOL. 

When it's completed, I'll get Alan to get a picture of it on me.  I'm hoping to be done this week.

Later!

Vintage Vogue 2884 - Oh So Close

More on the coat!  LOL.  Sometimes sewing happens around here in dribs and drabs; 30 minutes here and there.  Here's a picture of the insides.  Hmmm, I think this is the first time I've really shown the inside of my work to any real degree.  LOL. But I've done so much hand work, I want to show it off a bit.  You'll need to click on the picture to enlarge it to see the pad stitching done on the lapels and under collar.

Now I've got the front facing installed and steam pressed.  I've tacked it down in a few places and have the hem turned up and steamed.  Since there is a lot of acrylic in this wool blend, I can't touch the iron directly to the fabric; I have to use a press cloth to do any pressing or press from the wrong side where it won't show.  I'm also using my clapper to flatten the seams so it doesn't look fluffy.  LOL.  Tomorrow I'll baste the hem and take new pictures.  I'll be starting to put my lining together.  But...I'm going to pick stitch around the whole outside edge of the coat first. 

Toodles!

Upcoming Classes - B-Sew Inn & Cloth Merchants

I'll be teaching several classes at B-Sew Inn and the Cloth Merchants over the next couple of months.

B-Sew Inn Schedule:

Jean Vest Class       September 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th


Please check with B-Sew Inn to register 














 Cloth Merchants Classes

 September 10th (Saturday) B5354 Easy Knit Top

Cloth Merchants

Jean Jacket Class    Kwik Sew 2895
September 23rd, 30th, October 7th, 14th


Please check with the Cloth Merchants to register for the knit top class or the jean jacket class.

Vintage Vogue 2884 - Some progress

I spent Thursday and Friday in OKC with Claire Kennedy  working on my vintage coat.  I have the 2 piece front put together, the pocket inserted and instead of top-stitching, I'm doing a pick stitch by hand.  I'm learning so much in this class!  I've learned a better way to clip curves; instead of cutting out notches of fabric, I now cut slits to reduce the amount of fabric in a curve and to get the clipping to lie nice and flat.

I just finished my sleeves and thought I would show them to you.

Believe or not I lightened the crap out of these pictures to get even this much to show up.  LOL.  Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Here's a closeup of the pick stitch detail.

More to come...

Men & Bacon...

Wow...It's been so busy here lately almost 2 weeks have flown by before I knew it.  LOL.  I have a couple of projects I've been working but just haven't found time to blog about it. 

But, Alan and I were watching the Food Network the other night before going to sleep.  You're gonna die.  LOL.  We were watching Diners, Drive-ins & Dives to be exact.  They were at some restaurant; don't remember which one and they had this horrible sandwich on it.  It was a heart attach on a plate.  It was 2 grilled cheese sandwiches with a hamburger sandwiched between them.  And there was bacon.  Lots of bacon. 

What is it with men and bacon?  All you have to do is say Bacon and they start salivating. 

Well Alan went nuts over the sandwich and I had to make him one the next day.  Below is a picture of the finished product.  I'm only showing one picture, although he photographed each step in my making it.  LOL.

Oh and there is bacon.  And the little red things showing are ripe jalapenos.  Alan loved it.
 
Enjoy...

Remember this???

Wow...I remember how freaking cold it was when taking this picture.  We're experiencing our 32 or 33rd day of extreme over 100 degree heat here in Oklahoma.  We did get one tiny reprieve last night with a small thunderstorm passing through Tulsa.  Of course, it didn't last long and probably only gave us a half inch of rain.  By the way, we are down almost 15 inches for the year.  Oh well.

But...on another subject.  Look at the picture above and now look at what resides where the Mustang used to live.  LOL.

Alan is finally getting his shop!


Later!

Vintage Vogue 2884 - More

I'm making slow progress.  Too many other things going on in life.  LOL. But this is the under collar which goes around the back of the neck.  I had sore fingers when I finished working this piece.  I tried using a thimble but noticed I kept avoiding it.  Oh well.  I'm working on getting the rest of the underlining pieces basted to the fashion fabric. 

Vintage Vogue 2884

This is a Vogue re-issue of a 1954 design and is, again, out of print.  But you can still purchase in the OOP section of Vogue's on-line catalog.  I love the lines of this coat and I think it will be a great casual coat to add to my wardrobe.  This is the pattern I'm making up in a class with Claire Kennedy.  I'm learning some traditional tailoring techniques on the coat lapel/collar.

I met up with Claire in OKC at Helen Enox Fabrics and we selected a navy wool/acrylic/unknown (unknown because I don't remember) as the fashion fabric, a navy organdy to underline and a navy Bemburg as the lining.  Pretty blah I know but since I want to make this pattern up a second time, I thought I would make it easy on myself for the first go-round.  LOL.  The second time around, I can picture this in black with the cutouts under the are in some sort of black & white herringbone or some other kind of print. 

The first day we spent altering the pattern to suit my somewhat pear shaped figure.  I added 2 inches in length and a couple inches of width all around.  Since there are about 100 pattern pieces to the coat (LOL it sure seemed like it anyway), it took all day to get them altered.  The second day of class I spent basting the underlining fabric to the fashion fabric on the pieces getting the pad-stitching.  I also got the first lapel/collar pad-stitched.  Here's a picture of what I did.  Not really that professional looking but I think it gets the job done.  The picture shows the undercollar.  If you look carefully, you'll see the fabric is rolling to form the fold.  This is done by the hand stitching.  So far, I have both undercollar's done and next I'll be starting on the back piece of the collar.  Once the pad stitching is complete, I'll actually begin construction.  Yea!!!

Later...