I think I’ve decided what to do: add some buttons to the mix!
I like this because it adds some punctuation to the middle and bottom and outlines the diagonal front slightly, without being obtrusive or heavy-handed. I will make this one into a mockup and take it to Sharon’s, to check the fit and see what she thinks of the design.
Lesley asked what it would look like if I left a little of the black collar showing underneath the braid. I tried it tonight and it looks great! and very much like this:
Many thanks to Lesley for the suggestion!
Now, however, the black welt pocket looks out of place. So I tried removing it:
This might be better (my jury is still out on that), but is now boring on the bottom. I also haven’t decided what to do with the front edge of the coat. If I let it fall straight down, it will basically be double-breasted width, which tends to look boxy and unflattering on me. If I angle it, as in the photo, it’s okay, but lacks definition. Adding black piping calls attention to it, and it clashes with the line of the collar.
Hum-de hum-de-hum (as Pooh might say). What’s a girl to do?
Sleep on it, I think, and reconsider the problem in the morning.
I spent some time this morning playing with design for the cashmere coat. The original design, made back when I couldn’t draft my own, now strikes me as boring:
I wanted something more daring, more asymmetrical, and yet wearable on the street.
I spent some time draping various collar possibilities, and finally came up on this:
The asymmetric collar is balanced by the single black welt pocket (I still need to figure out its final location); the other welt pocket will be done in the coat fabric and placed to be as absolutely unnoticeable as possible. (Adding a second black welt pocket would totally unbalance the design and be visually distracting from the sweep of the collar. The one black welt pocket is essentially a continuation of the shorter collar line, which adds oomph to the line and also helps balance the design visually. The other one, if I added it, would clash with the long collar line and unbalance things again.)
I liked this, but felt it lacked tension at the top – some sort of defining line would help. I tried a strip of coat fabric:
I am not absolutely certain I like the braid trim, but I think it has definite possibilities. I will mull on this a bit more.
Last night I thread-traced all the markings for the buttonholes (truthfully, there’s no other way to mark the mohair!). This morning I got up early and put in all five buttonholes, with very little effort (except on the first one where I accidentally sewed the buttonhole on the wrong side of the fabric!).
I don’t know why bound buttonholes are supposed to be difficult. It’s admittedly a little more complicated than simply zigzagging around the edges and cutting a slit open for a machine buttonhole, but as long as you remember the steps it’s not hard. I’m amused by a Threads article in my “Jackets, Coats, and Suits” book that recommends having a professional tailor put in your bound buttonholes. It’s not that hard!
(Sometimes I think 90% of being able to do the unusual is simply not realizing (or refusing to believe) that it’s difficult. I remember that as a 13-year-old I started up an underground newsletter for a summer program I had been to…I had 68 subscribers to the magazine, which was printed on pink ditto-masters and titled “The Scarlet Newsletter” or some such. I had friends writing articles for it, even a little fundraising drive – and I managed to do all that because my parents never told me this was difficult. They helped me find pink ditto-masters and figure out one or two problems along the way, but other than that they acted like it was a perfectly normal thing for a 13-year-old to do. And because they didn’t say anything, I never realized how unusual it was to be doing that! My parents had their foibles, but they were dead right on how to encourage me in my little adventures.)
The buttonholes aren’t perfect – there’s a tiny bit of gapping in the middle, maybe 1/16 of an inch in some places, but they look pretty good. More to the point, from the first one to the fifth one there’s a noticeable improvement in quality, which makes me pretty happy. I could conceivably have gotten better results by basting the lips together before sewing down the triangles on the end, but since I’m working with suede, basting would have been quite difficult, and would have left marks. Suede is more forgiving than smooth leather, but not by much.
I think my next set of buttonholes will be better, so it’s good that I’m doing the practice coat.
Despite 11 hour days at work, I have been working on bound buttonholes, practicing and trying several different methods. Here are two of them, along with a button:
I gave up on the second one halfway through as I didn’t like the look of it at all. The organza patch was supposed to press invisibly away, but obviously didn’t. I also couldn’t see how to get piped buttonhole lips into the window gracefully (and didn’t think that flat lips would look good with the fluffy coat fabric). Finally, pressing from the front as instructed crushed the fluffy “pile” of the mohair. The first method worked perfectly and is the method I will use in the coat.
I think the second method would work better with a fabric that is not as lofty and not as hard to press. (I’m still trying to figure out how to press the seams without squishing the fabric, but perhaps I can either (1) brush it afterwards to bring up the nap again, or (2) look up how one presses velvet. This is obviously a problem that other people have dealt with, so I just have to find out how.)
At any rate, I like my bound buttonholes, so my next step will be putting them into the coat. That will be fun! I really enjoyed making the first bound buttonhole and am looking eagerly forward to doing more. Funny since I hate doing machine-worked buttonholes. I don’t know why bound buttonholes are so much fun to me, but they are.