I made great progress today, and still was able to watch the entire inauguration, a brilliantly inspiring sequence of events, the invocations, the music, the speeches, and of course, listening to Obama and the hope and change he represents, and the uniting of a peoples that have been divided way too long.
One of the joys of the computer is being able to stream an event like this, and work while it is on in the background, looking up when the scene requires. And it made me stay put in the studio, so I really got to concentrate on the layout for Project Three. It took me most of the day, constantly rearranging, repositioning, piecing, and fudging. I had very little scrap left when all was said and done. Once I had the layout to where I wanted it, I found a million excuses to keep me from actually making the first cut.
Some of my favorite parts of making a garment like this, are to poke around in the stash, and see what can work with this piece. I really didn’t have quite the right amount of fabric, but one of the things I did find in the stash, was the leftover dark teal felt from a bag I made where I felted a Corriedale wool cross and bombyx silk. I’m including a photo of the bag, it has an inkle woven band over Ultrasuede for the handle. I actually had just enough felt to do the two piece belt in the back of the coat, and the inside of the collar.
I went through my huge stash of buttons, and couldn’t find five that would work together. Black was too strong, but I had enough felt left to do covered buttons, and I think the size and color will be great. And I found a scrap of plum Ultrasuede to make the lips of the bound buttonholes. (The scraps are left from the bag as well).
I played around with making a twist ply rope to couch some of the topstitching details. I like the rope I came up with, but I won’t know how I’ll like the couched effect until I actually have the coat together and can try it out. I was having so much fun stalling for time. Finally I just grabbed the scissors, and made that first cut. The rest went like butter. So, now I have this huge pile of cut fabric pieces, and all the pulled embellishments. I found a wine red sari in the stash, which might work really well for the lining, and the best, I found two decorative zippers, the perfect size, for the zipper pockets in the fronts, except that one was black, and one was gray. The teeth were the same color, so I just grabbed a Sharpie marker, and colored in the gray one, and no one, except those reading this blog, will ever know the difference.
Bri made progress too, on the placemat exchange warp. I helped her beam the 12 yards of 10/2 cotton, and we are all ready to tie onto the front and start weaving. The warp went on easily, and I’m hoping it will weave easily too.