Dearest Sewing Friends!
I'm most excited to be making good progress with this blanket - turning it into a coat! - which my friend gifted to me a month or so ago... It is woolly, beautifully-brightly-graphically-coloured, and I am around 20 hours in so far with the work.
This is how I began: the blanket draped on the dress-form for a few days, as I mused over it...
Thinking about how I could get the daisies to sit down the middle of the back...
Then I cut it in half... Phew!
I tried various zips (that I already owned) next to the fabric, deciding in the end to buy one. There was fortunately a nice long black plastic zip available in the local haberdashery!
I fairly randomly decided to 'seal' the cut edges at the top of the torso, as I was worried that the knit might begin unweaving as I worked on it...
And I had to unstitch the fringe which went all the way along the longest edges of the blanket. I now have a HUGE pile of these; at least enough to make a Santa Claus beard.
And I decided, having pinned the back of the new coat to the mannequin, to use these edgings as a kind of emphasis on the sides - decorative connecting line between back and front. I sewed them into a tube, for extra strength, then sewed them into the sides, like this:
This way, I could start to see the final shape of the coat, which helped a lot in keeping the process unfolding. Once I had a clearer view of the shape, I could begin thinking how to construct the front of the coat, with a zip.
I cut two strips for the front, 'sealing' them at the top with bias-binding again, and edging the side which will meet the zip, to reinforce it so the knit will not stretch during use (of the zip).
Pinning the zip in place was quite exciting!
Though when it was pinned, it looked wavy.... This corrected itself once sewn, thankfully.
Now, the zip took many sessions! Though I'd machine-sewn this length of reinforced edging, the zip on top of that thick edging would not go into the sewing machine, and so out came the needle and thread. The black thread had also snapped a lot, and only one particular type of thicker black thread worked, which quickly ran out with the long seams I was making...
So I went shopping again, and found this jeans thread, a nice thick orange one, which auspiciously works perfectly alongside this mustardy colour! It took many hours to complete: some at the kitchen table, some out in the bar with a cuppa with friends, and some in bed half-watching sewing shows, between stitches.
I finished the zip finally last night. And now I have some reshaping to do - I forgot to mention the darts that I made: I've not got much experience in making darts, and was trying to shape it before the zip was properly sewn in...So I will go back and correct the back dart (above) in particular, which is too high, and thus makes the waist sit wrong.
I am quite pleased with how it looks now, and I have rest of the fabric laying out, as I build up my confidence to cut the sleeves...!
But first, I'll undo these centre-back darts...
And iron this side seam, hoping it'll resolve the kink which I made.