Dearest Sewing Tribe,

I really wanted to also share a quick update about this jacket, which was on the Needlework Monday Featured Post #240 but my post was about the cloud handbag....

closing up the old buttonholes

The jacket had a big-minor transformation this week, just by adding buttons: I tried out a multitude of ideas with which buttons to add, and settled finally on these rather dramatic-but-harmonious ones; what do you think??

the final effect of a hard-worked-for button renovation!

The jacket was another incredible find on the 50c stall: usually they charge a whopping ONE EURO for jackets and coats, but the stall owner gave me a discount that week! So only 50c, for a perfect wool jacket - which was just missing buttons, as you might have noticed on my earlier photos: because I have quite a large button collection that has been building up in the past year, this was a non-issue for me!

final effect of the finished hooks-and-eyes: the hook needed to be left shiny on the hooking part, so to let it catch nicely with the eye

the colour combination is VERY satisfying!

I had some big black wooden buttons which were nice, but not perfect - which this perfect jacket merits; they had come off of some less-beautiful garment, I think it was an ugly cardigan, several years ago... So I thought about how to paint them a good colour, and went to the paint shop, where the guy eventually pulled out the perfect viola spray tin from the back cupboards... Spray paint is not something I am fond of, but needs must (for a button, which will get a lot of wear, and which any less-firm paint layer would come off from), and the can cost only 3 euros, so it was a worthwhile investment.... which I can maybe use too for something else.

one of several-issimo coats of paint!

The spraying was MUCH harder than I thought it'd be! It stuck to the card every time: I wanted to spray back and front of each button. Every spray coating I gave it, hardened and stuck at the edges to the card, then when it was dry and I turned them over to spray the other sides - the dried paint became reactivated and stuck AGAIN to the card! It took a lot of layers to get at least one side of each button neat enough! Wah!

I also had to search for giant hooks-and-eyes - grucche in local dialect, I was told by the guy in the shop - these biggest ones were just right, and I sewed them on neatly, then wrapped the lovely purple thread around them for an extra-neat effect. As I attached them, I made sure to add a few millimetres to the centre ones, to give more of a cynched waist.

my not-so-neat thread wrapping, done in the bar!

The wrapping was not as easy as it looks, either - which seems to be a theme in learning-to-sew! There are so many ways in which thread can get tangled around itself -and I appear to be fluent in all of them, hahaha!! Maybe the fact that I was sewing in the bar, whilst drinking a glass or two of red wine, might have contributed to the thread disarray...

sewing in low lighting is an extra challenge!