Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Gertie's coat sew along marathon week: DAY 1

December is almost there and the Crepe sew-along will soon start! I cannot wait! The only problem is that I have not yet completed the coat... In October, I had decided to take it easy and to make other things in the same time. Good or bad idea, I don't know. I just want to be done with the coat, to start fresh. This is why I am launching a...

Gertie's coat sew along marathon week

Ta ta ta taaaaaa 
*lightning effect*

Today is day 1: recap' and button holes.

So far, I had chosen the pattern, completed the muslin, pre-shrinked the fabric, copied and cut the pattern... Here are a few pictures to remember!

I went for an Ottobre pattern, a pure budgetary decision

Muslin 1 issues: shoulders too wide, body not wide enough.

Bottom of the coat too small
Second version of the muslin:way better. Just a bit worried about the sleeves length...
Chosen fashion fabric: Mustard wool. I have another lining now ;) To be seen later this week...


Now I will follow Gertie's instructions. The first thing I did was to make bound buttonholes. It was A LOT of work and my first attempt. I had four to make and some look better then other. I liked her patch method a lot and I am going to re-use it quite a lot! I have used left-over chiffon that I had from a bridesmaid dress I made this summer. It worked quite well.

Applying interfacing and drawing the rectangles

Pinning the chiffon

Sewing the rectangles

From the inside

Chop Chop!

At work!

Pulling the patch

After ironing

The button passes!

And hides my mess

Said mess, I'll do better next time ;)

Yep, the things are a bit crooked... :S But fairly steady!


As people say, practice makes perfect. I am sure that my next button holes will be better. But I am not going to complain too much. They're ok, and you won't see them that much behind my cute self covered buttons ;)

That is it for DAY 1 of my marathon! Tomorrow, I'll blog about a LOT of handstitching!

Did you participate to or finish the sew-along?
Did you make bound buttonholes? Did you blog about it?
It would be great to include a link in the comments, so everyone sees how everyone did!

3 comments:

  1. Ah, the dreaded buttonholes. I'm a dropout from the sewalong, too (maybe you'll inspire me to get back to it ;) ), but I just did my first bound buttonholes on a winter coat for my daughter. My solution to keeping everything neat: doing them almost entirely by hand. The only part I did by machine was the initial boxes.

    But they look cute!

    I love your coat colour. So warm and sunny for the winter :)

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  2. I have an almost Identical colour wool for my lady grey too!

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  3. Yep, consider me one of the Lady Grey dropouts, too. I'm on Thanksgiving holiday for the rest of the week so I think I'm going to get back to it in between family visits. I'm excited to read about your marathon! Maybe it will give me a kick in the you know where.
    I did do my bound buttonholes. I found that I couldn't keep those lips straight unless I slipped stitched them to the box opening first. Then I stitched the little triangles by machine and removed the slip stitching. It made a huge difference.
    I'm still padstitching the second lapel....

    ReplyDelete

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