I've been working on my jacket from the rayon tablecloth I dyed. So far, so good. It will be unlined and the rayon frays like crazy so I considered several ways to finish the seams. At first I planned on doing a Hong Kong seam, but I didn't have any amazing fabric to use as the binding. I wondered, too, if the added weight of the binding would be too much for the rayon fabric. I decided that I would do French seams. That's what you see above, on the inside of the jacket. To make French seams, stitch the pieces wrong side together with a 3/8 inch seam. Trim that seam to 1/8 inch. Then fold right sides together and stitch a 1/4 inch seam, enclosing the raw edges. Since the sleeve seams won't be seen, I just overcast them. I turned the raw edges of the facing and the sleeve hems in and stitched them down with a machine feather stitch.
I was concerned that the jacket would lose its shape because the fabric is so drapey. I redrew the interfacing and facing so it would be similar to the interfacing that would be in a tailored jacket or coat. It goes all the way across the back and around the armseye in both front and back. This facing will enclose the sleeve to armseye seam.
I decided to make Chinese ball buttons for the closure. I think the jacket would look very cool with some kind of elaborate frog, but I think they would be too heavy. The ball buttons I made really are round. In the picture the shank pushes them off to the side. The next time I take a picture of something like this, I'm going to put the button on top of a spool of thread and push the shank down the hole in the spool. Then the button will stand up straight. Of course I didn't think of this idea until I started editing the photo of the thread below.
Who knew Ikea was the place to get thread? When my daughter and I were there a couple of years ago, this thread was on sale for fifty cents. So I bought some of this blue and some navy. Now I'm a thread connoisseur--or maybe just someone who has already done enough sewing with unsatisfactory thread. I thought it was pretty good when I bought it, but I was too chicken to try it out. Since the color matched and I didn't want to trek out the fabric store, I decided to use the Ikea thread. It's fabulous! Very smooth, no lint, no breakage, and I wish I had more.
In one of my periodic "There's no room for any more stuff" fits, I decided it was time to get rid of all the coins that have been collecting around here. I rolled 16 pounds of coins! I'm feeling rich!
2 comments:
can't wait to see the end result!
This jacket is going to be beautiful. We took all our coins in this month too, however most except some pennies were already rolled. Laurie bought Coreys shoes with it. Since his size is 14 now, we can't just go anywhere to buy shoes. When do boy's feet stop growing, anyway. 14 years old and size 14 shoes!
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