Oh, beautiful Sewing Community,
This has been an intense week emotionally and physically: sewing, as usual, works as a beautiful metaphor to hold my life together, relax and resolve problems - stitch by stitch. I made a great adjustment to one of my refurbished wool coats, by adding big pockets, and I revisited my pantaloons that I completed last week - this time reinforcing both the ankle cuffs and the thinner part of the lower-middle trouser part, which had torn as soon as I first put them on! I spent some time nipping at myself that I should have constructed them better, and should've cut them better initially, as I could see when I cut them that the fabric of the old sheet was worn away at one part...
The task of the reinforcing of my pantaloons was challenging because I had a lot of 'failure' chatter going on in my mind and emotions - what with loss upon loss seeming to come, and with my Art seeming to feel more and more ignored by the world, and just small things piling up - I almost got overladen, and almost left the difficult sewing jobs for a never-get-done pile! But when I feel particularly morose, sewing really does feel powerfully uplifting: especially to finish a fiddley piece of fabric, and to have a really useful new garment to wear. I'll be taking a long-ish train trip to the north of Italy in a few weeks, which I definitely want a comfortable pair of trousers for.
And I want very much to push through any small obstacles in my sewing projects these days, because I am on a road to mastery! If I stall at every hurdle, I'll never get to where I want to get to! It feels very good to be developing some discipline in this trajectory, as I really do wish to be much more proficient at my sewing work.
In the end, I decided to probably leave the elastic out of the bottom of the pantaloons, as it was a bit too clunky and rigid. I like them being wider and looser, now that they are machine-stitched to the legs.... it looks more elegant - better balanced somehow. I want to learn to trust my intuition around such things - it it important that I develop my fabric visioning, and my ability to make right choices for the kind of feeling I want to get when I'm wearing/ others are wearing my clothes.
Another job was my lovely grey wool coat, which I adjusted earlier in the year, widening it by putting in a new vertical row of buttons (from my gran's collection) and also adding a thick kind of wedge into the oxters and arms (using an old, felted wool scarf in a contrasting colour).
When I was wearing the coat, as perfect as it is, I still wanted it to be even perfecter, and I kept putting my hands towards where the pockets should be.... So I eventually decided to cut up the big wool skirt that I've been using to warm my hips and legs, but which is too heavy and unflattering to enjoy fully, and made some lovely biiiig pockets!
It was very straightforward: I just cut the pocket shapes by folding the skirt over and cutting two at once, then folding the edges over at the top, and hemming all around - pinned in place first, then sewn directly onto the coat.
I did this during our wonderful Co-Creation Sessions, which we have every Thursday, and which was just the right amount of time from start to finish, to get the pockets in place - and then do a test run of how many lemons I could fit in a pocket: VERY good lemon count; at least 5 or 6 big ones! I like to know that pockets can be properly useful, like for when I pop down the garden and have to gather more fruits than I can fit in my hands. :-D
It has been really wonderful walking about in my coat, with my hands in my pockets: it makes me happy with such a simple but beautiful and useful facility in a coat; just having warm hands and a space to store things as I walk... brilliant.
blue and white striped pinafore - before
Oh, AND I dyed my blue-and-white striped pinafore RED: this was a beautiful experience! I found this old packet of dye which was sitting at the back of the two sisters' magical general store - I kept seeing it gathering dust on the shelf, and eventually bought it - and it gathered dust on my shelf for a couple of years! This second pinafore that I had made - the first one was red already! - felt too much like a nurse's uniform, and too 'domestic', whereas the red brought it into my realm of the powerful, the mystical and the celebratory.
I made quite a mess of the dyeing to begin with, because I used a too-small pan - transferring the garment to the new bigger pan was VERY messy! Eek! Strong red dye all over the wall, cooker and floor - kitchen drama!
The rest of the process was much more relaxed!
Adding salt...
Though it is not as much 'needlework' as the rest of my update, it DOES now have blue stitching in parts, which I wanted to share - where the thread I used (and the original hemming threads) must have not been cotton! I love how this adds another dimension of individuality to the garment, and emphasises my handstitching. A beautiful, unique detail.
And the 'after' dress, hanging up for the final stage of drying - it has to dry at first layed down flat, so that the dye doesn't accumulate further down the garment...
