No more sewing, for now.

All of my sewing supplies and machines are now in a shipping container, and there they will remain for about a month, if the container tracking estimates hold. For various reasons, I decided to let the turquoise coat (and its shoulder pads that I'd been planning to work on) get packed too. That means this won't be much of a sewing blog for the time being. In the next few days, it could be a knitting blog, but only about the one pullover I've been working on... not too exciting. So there will be either a fairly light or fairly off-topic schedule, or both, until further notice. That, or I'll take up hand sewing.

... and Simplicity 1540 revisited

Well, I decided I wasn't quite done with this after all. I had two tabs I'd started to make, thinking I might use them for button tabs on the pockets. They were from exactly the same pattern piece that you're meant to use on the middle of the back, for the purely-decorative tab there.

Then I decided I didn't really want any major closures on the pockets, because they'd just get in the way. (I may still put snaps behind the non-functional buttons that I added.)

I pretty much forgot about the tabs for a while, but I figured I should get any remaining machine sewing done today. At that point I decided I should try making the tabs into epaulets, especially since that could give me a chance to show off yet another different size of the matched buttons I have. So I bagged out the tabs, clipped, turned, pressed, topstitched, then opened enough of the sleeve seam to put them in and sew back closed. The smallest size of button did indeed look best. I just sewed this through all layers, since I was not about to make matching hand-worked buttonholes in any size, not with the thread I used for the other ones.

I'm pretty happy with them, but now that they're on I do think the coat would look better with shoulder pads. Those can be done entirely by hand; I'll probably make them of several layers of self-fabric, since the coat is unlined and ready-made ones wouldn't match. I'd like to say I'll be posting a picture tomorrow, but let's be honest, the movers are coming Wednesday, so any post whatsoever may be too much.

Simplicity 1540 done

More or less, anyway. It should get a final press, but I might or might not do that right away. If it's going with me, yes; if it's going in the shipping container, no doubt it's going to need a press when it comes back out anyway.

My dress form's still in a bizarre state where nothing hangs right on it. I'm about to shrink it down to its minimum size, not fiddle with it, so:

My main conclusions about this:

1. Never do hand-worked buttonholes with regular thread, not even doubled, and probably not quadrupled either. You'll deeply regret it before you've even finished the first one, and once you've cut the first one open there's nothing to do but finish them all. It'll take forever and the needle eye may wear through the thread. If you can't get matching buttonhole twist or other very heavy thread, just do them some other way. I did try cording these but it didn't work all that well. I suppose I could do another go-round with real buttonhole twist, which I've since been able to find.
2. This pattern is meant for fleece-like fabrics. A lot of the synthetic fleece readily available in the U.S. would be a bit too drapey for the design, I imagine, and the lightweight fusible the pattern recommends for the collar and sleeve bands might not work at all on fabrics that melt at low temperatures. Boiled wool and some of the coarser synthetic fleece types should be OK.
3. It's nice that the pattern gives you proper upper and under collar pieces, but the sizes might not be quite different enough depending on your fabric's turn of cloth.
4. I took in the side seams quite a bit, but it still seems rather loose-fitting. Probably not my best look.
5. Because of the roundness of my buttons, I had to make the buttonholes longer than I'd have liked; a deeper underlap might have been better. Obviously the pattern's not intended for thick buttons in the first place, though, because there's supposed to be one right in the middle of the back, where anything protruding would be rather awkward.

BTW, I did in fact decide to topstitch the front edges, and I added non-functional buttons to the pockets to show off the fact that I have these buttons in a few sizes. I did have to choose carefully because they clearly have some sort of past: they are not all quite the same color.

giant cat checkpoint

pic.twitter.com/VjLqdqJ9bC

Buckram pocket template

No doubt you've seen this before if you've seen enough books/blogs/tutorials, but it's not a bad idea to make a template for your patch pockets. Here I used buckram, mainly because it's crisp enough, thin, and I have a lot on hand at the moment. It'll ripple a bit when steamed, and it may become sticky due to the sizing, so keep that in mind when deciding if it's appropriate for your particular fabric.

The template is slightly smaller than the pattern without the seam allowances or the fold-down facing; it's looking bigger than the pocket itself in this picture, even though it isn't actually (camera angle? color? I don't really know why.) Anyway, I put it on the wrong side of the pocket and pressed all the edges in around it. This fabric is quite bulky so there's distinctly less than the 5/8" seam allowance pressed in here, which is just as well because that makes it easier to shape the curves. Afterward I felled down all those edges by hand, so that this was not visible from the outside. This both keeps the seam allowance in place and will reduce lint formation as the pocket is used — another way to address that would be to both edgestitch and topstitch, such that the cut edge is between the two rows of stitching, but I wanted only edgestitching in this case.

Like RTW?

I've been putting off doing anything more on my boiled wool coat. There isn't, strictly speaking, that much more to do; the only major thing is the pockets. But I want to add fusible interfacing to the hem, and that always feels like a big obstacle: I have to cut more out. Given that someone was coming to look at the apartment, I had another a reason not to want to make the whole cutting mess.

The reason I do want to interface is it's usually done in RTW,* and it seems to keep the hem looking decent (not ripply or stretched out) for a lot longer. I can see just from doing a light press-up of the hem that it'll be worth it on this fabric.

I've also just noticed that the flats for this pattern don't show any topstitching on the front edges below the collar. I haven't decided whether to respect that or not. I did understitch, so that may be enough, especially if I do attach the facing edges to the princess seams inside.

At any rate, I don't have that much more time to use my machine before it gets packed up, so if nothing else, I plan on trying to get all the machine sewing done in the next couple of days.

* For coats, at least; not for knits or shirts, say. Not that I do things purely because RTW does them; I often pick out more interesting non-plastic buttons, for example, though I'm now trying not to make them stand out too much as too-nice-for-the-fabric.

Yet another marking tool

I already have several chalk pencils, the (Clover?) chalk wheels (the cylindrical ones, not the triangular one), triangular tailor's chalk, and one of the water-soluble blue pens. The other day, I also got this set of chalk markers (NAYY). I haven't used it enough to really do a solid comparison to everything else, but here are my general impressions of the different tools I have.

• The chalk pencils (usually called something like "dressmaker's pencil" and under various brand names; they look like regular pencils, more or less) make reasonably visible marks, but work best on a firm fabric that won't move as you're trying to mark it. They can be sharpened to make the line narrow, although in certain colors the lead tends to break a lot. I've seen them in pink, yellow, blue, and white.
• The chalk wheels make the narrowest marks, and (other than the pen) work the best (or maybe I should say least badly) on fabrics that try to move as you're marking them. The marks don't always show up that well, especially on light fabrics, as the chalk only comes in light colors. There are various types of these; I'm not sure what the name of mine is, since I've long since thrown out the packaging. But they're cylindrical and I have four of them: red (really pink), yellow, blue, and white, with the chalk a pale pastel version of each.
• The tailor's chalk does a good job of making marks that don't wear off before you want them to, even on textured fabrics. It's fairly blunt/wide, though, and like most anything else non-rolling, can push the fabric along as you try to mark. The colors are a little more saturated than the chalk wheels', though still light-ish. To the best of my knowledge, the triangular chalk is fairly generic and should be fairly widely available (if not in every chain store).
• The water-soluble pen works well, though I wouldn't want to use it on anything not washable, and I'd be afraid to heat-set marks in. I think these are pretty easy to find.
• The Signet Color markers are kind of similar to the chalk pencils overall, but a bit softer and more "spreadable" (although they still are definitely chalky and won't necessarily mark highly textured fabrics all that well). They also come in more colors than any of the other tools I've used. You get a pen-like holder and a set of different "leads" that you can put into it, half of them white and half of them in assorted colors, some rather bright. I think they are made by a German company and I don't know how readily available they are worldwide. So I also bought the one set of refills that the store had; we'll see how long they last.
• I also have the usual transfer paper, which comes in more intense colors than most of the items above (except the Signet Color). With the chalk-based transfer paper, the chalk can dust off onto the fabric a bit, and the tracing wheel isn't really appropriate for delicate fabrics. The wax-based transfer paper can make a real mess if you're not careful. I don't have any of it any more, but I used to keep it all inside plastic bags to keep the wax from getting everywhere. It's very effective in making visible marks, shall we say.
• I have a Hera marker, which of course only works on fabric that will hold a crease, and of course the mark also goes away as soon as you iron it. The obvious advantage is you aren't adding any chalk or wax or ink to your fabric, so there's nothing to worry about removing later in that sense.

Stuff I don't have at the moment:

• Evaporating tailor's chalk. This is cool but I don't know of any way to get it other than from New York.
• Wax chalk. I'd be careful with this, especially any of the colors other than white. I hear it doesn't really go away; it just melts into the fabric.
• Air-soluble markers (which are usually purple, no?) I've heard lots of stories of the marks evaporating before people finish their project; no doubt that would happen to me too.

And then there are always tailor's tacks. They don't give you an unbroken line, but they do work on textured, delicate, and stretch fabrics; they can be taken out when you want; and they show up. I don't think they take that much longer than most of the other methods (aside from notching and punch holes) but I can understand that they aren't necessarily that much fun. This is one place I use up my bizarre thread colors, BTW.