I tried the “diamond shaped buttonhole” idea yesterday night, sewing a square patch of leather to the Celtic braid fabric and then binding the buttonhole with black China silk.  It worked OK, but I didn’t like the look of the machine-stitched patch, so tried sewing on by hand.

Behold the reason I prefer hand-stitching for anything that will show:

The top one is hand stitched to the fabric (I haven’t put the buttonhole in yet); the bottom is machine stitched.  See how much flatter and more attractive the edges look in the handstitched version?

In the process of doing my samples I did discover something encouraging: my sewing machine handles the leather just fine!  Since very few home sewing machines will do leather, I’m very pleased.  My machine is a Bernette 740E that I bought back in 1994.  I had been interested in “trading up” for a Bernina 730 or 830 Record (the last of the all-metal mechanical machines), but if this one will do leather then I’m all for keeping it.  It’s been a faithful and basically reliable machine for almost 20 years, and I see no reason to switch.  Unless, of course, I get some fancy-pants, $1000+ newfangled sewing machine, which seems sort of pointless since the only thing I really want to do with it is straight stitch, zigzag, and (optional) an occasional overcasting stitch.  I like the mechanical, all-metal machines – so much more reliable and sturdy.  (Mine isn’t 100% metal – one or two pieces are plastic –  but it’s close.)  You just can’t buy them like that anymore, alas.

Anyway, I am pleased with this patch/buttonhole sample.  The only thing that concerns me is the size.  For aesthetic reasons, I’d prefer to keep the patch the size it currently is (7/8″ on a side), which means the max size buttonhole I can make is 7/8″, a little larger than the one in the photo.  The buttons I’ve ordered are 3/4″, which would probably be OK, except that they are also highly domed, meaning they’ll need a larger buttonhole.  The only thing to do is wait for the buttons to arrive, and see if I can get them through.  If not, I’m back to a smaller button…probably a round button in black suede.

Off to play a few more rounds of Design Poker!  Sharon and I are meeting up this morning to go see the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the DeYoung Museum, and I want to bounce my Phoenix Rising design ideas off her.  It should be lots of fun!  (And I am looking forward to the exhibit – Jean Paul Gaultier is my favorite couturier, now that Alexander McQueen has passed on.  I expect to come away with lots of new ideas!)

Laura commented on my last post, “Why not use vertical buttonholes?”, which, DUH!, was the solution.  Or half of the solution – the other half being how to align the buttons and the buttonholes gracefully.  I’ll spare you the gory details of my attempts – which involved round, triangular, and bar-shaped buttons, hand-dyed maroon silk for buttonholes, and lots of progressively more desperate ideas – but I finally settled on this:

I haven’t yet decided whether these are square buttons with inconspicuous hand-worked buttonholes, or a square bound buttonhole with matching (i.e. essentially invisible) buttons.  I am leaning towards the square bound buttonhole, both because I think it will be more stable (the fabric is quite coarsely woven) and because square buttons are prone to twisting.  If I put a medium size, round button covered in black suede against a larger square buttonhole, the button should be more or less invisible, so from a distance, all you’d see is the square.

As you can see in the photo, I think I like having it with less of the vest showing – this way I get a thin black stripe that emphasizes the vertical striping and echoes the thin red stripes separating the Celtic braids.  It also keeps the emphasis on the handwoven fabric.  With more black showing, the black gets more attention, and it doesn’t echo the stripes in the fabric.

Having decided all this, I now need to alter the pattern for the vest to include the central panel of Celtic braid fabric.  I may also change the front facing from leather to a woven fabric, so making the bound buttonhole will be easier – but I need to make some practice buttonholes, to see if I need to do that.

Whew!  Funny, isn’t it?  that something “simple” can get so complicated so quickly…

I finished joining panels of fabric and cutting out the cape yesterday, so I just had to do another draped simulation.  Then I got to messing with the buttonhole design…

Here’s what I tried first – black vest with bound buttonholes made of red-and-black leather (a red lambskin imprinted with snakeskin patterns):

And here is a closeup:

I didn’t like this.  The “snakeskin” is a little too pale and a little too orangey to match, and the pattern doesn’t relate back to the overall piece.  (A pity, because I paid way too much for that scrap of leather.)

So I went back to the Celtic braid fabric, and tried it for buttonholes:

I liked this better, but still felt unsatisfied.  Also, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do a bound buttonhole in a fabric that heavy.

But what if I made an entire strip of the Celtic braid fabric, and ran it straight down the middle, with black leather buttonholes?

Aha!  Much better.  But not much black was left, so I peeled back the edges of the cape by one stripe on either side:

I am not quite sure which I prefer, but I do know that I like both!  What remains to be seen is how to handle the buttons – which, of course, do not sit nicely and tamely in the center of the buttonhole but pull to one side.  Off-center buttons would be a disaster.  I think I will make up a sample buttonhole/button to see how it works, or else consult with Sharon.

Off to the farmer’s market!  and then to haul an astonishing amount of asbestos tile (left over from when we had the hardwood floors put in) to the hazardous waste dump.  After that, back to work on the coat!

Back to the Celtic Braid Coat:

The “wings” of the cape are 33 inches wide, which is a problem if you only have 22.5″ fabric.  The solution, of course, is to join the panels.  The problem with that solution, of course, is that this particular fabric has very prominent stripes, meaning if you’re just a little off, it will be obvious from a mile off.

So yesterday night, in a fit of insomnia, I top-basted two panels together, then basted the seam, then machine-stitched and pressed the seam, using a clapper to flatten the seam as much as possible.

I am pleased with the results:

The vertical pin shows the seam.  Except for a not-terribly-obviously squiggle near the center of the photo, it’s essentially invisible.  I’m going to go back and do some more examination/analysis of the seamline to see if there’s a more accurate way of basting, so I can eliminate the squiggle as well.  But I may be stuck re-stitching portions of the seamline as I go.

And the rest of my leather-sewing tools and materials have arrived, meaning I have no more excuses not to work on it.  Since I have six weeks left to sew it, definitely time to get cracking!

In my copious free time, I am also studying up on Adobe Illustrator.  I want to use it for my fashion sketches.  I have a Wacom tablet (which can be used for drawing) which I can use for the preliminary sketches, then clean them up for more detailed simulations.  The advantage of Illustrator over pen and pencil is that mistakes can be un-done! and I can construct much more detailed fashion drawings than I could with more physical materials.  I am far better with a computer than with colored pencils!  I’ll post the results of my experimentation here, of course.

I have also decided to start draping muslins for some of the more interesting designs, just to see if they’ll work.  I am under no delusions that I can create an insta-pattern from the muslins (I haven’t refined my technical skills that far yet), but it will be fun and challenging, and I’ll learn a lot even if I don’t get the exact results I’m after.

But first, back to work on the coat!