Apparently I was trying to juggle too many things in my head while cutting out the fabric, because I made some major doozies while cutting out the fabric.  The worst one was probably cutting both back pieces against the grain, so the order of the colored stripes is opposite that of the front!  Well, at least they match each other, and there is enough going on in the rest of the jacket that I don’t think it will be obvious.  You’d have to be looking from the side and paying serious attention to make it out.

I also mis-cut one of the facings, also a serious mistake that forced me to re-cut the piece.  What with all the errors, I’ve got barely enough fabric, about two half-yard pieces after I cut the sleeves.  Good thing I wove all that extra yardage!  It’s insurance against later incompetence.

(Note to self: next time, make a checklist of all the things that need to be “just so”, and follow it!  Works for more things than flying airplanes.)

Anyway, the pieces are all cut now (except the sleeves, which I will do later this morning), and it’s time to apply the interfacing.  We are using hair canvas as a sew-in interfacing, because we weren’t sure about applying two fusibles on top of each other.  I could have sewn it in by machine, but being me, I had to do it the hard way:

Here I’ve cut the interfacing using the facing pattern, then trimmed out 5/8″ + 1/16″ = 11/16″ around the sides.  The 5/8″ is to keep it out of the seam allowance, and the 1/16″ is to give the seam room to turn.  I’ve then catchstitched it to the facing.

These two pieces took me about an hour and a half, so the bulk of my work this week will be the two big facing pieces in front. I’m guessing the two of them will take six hours to do.  After that, I will need to cut out the lining (a challenge in slippery charmeuse) and assemble the outer pieces, and the facing/lining.  Given that my trip to AVL will take up all of Saturday, I’m not sure I can finish all that by Sunday afternoon, when I go up to see Sharon again.  If I have to, I’ll settle for just getting the outer shell completed, so we can do the final fitting.

Went up to see Sharon, and we made the final adjustments to the muslin yesterday.  I am now prepared to cut the Real Fabric(!).

We also tested the interfacings, and decided to fuse the entire length of fabric to a very lightweight weft-inserted interfacing.  This should stabilize it and prevent it from “bagging” as handwoven fabric is sometimes inclined to do.  (We could have accomplished the same thing via underlining, but this is quicker and probably more apt for Handwoven readers as well.)  We’re going to use hair canvas as interfacing on the facings, to give the neck more body.

So I have my work cut out for me this week:

• fuse the entire length of the fabric to the lightweight interfacing
• cut the pattern pieces, carefully matching stripe edges and colors wherever possible
• cut the hair canvas to fit the facings, and catchstitch the hair canvas to the facings (this keeps it out of the seams and produces a better look)
• cut the lining
• sew front and back pattern pieces together and sew down the sleeves at the bottom of the armpit only.  (Sharon will do some magic around the sleeves to make sure they fit well.)
• sew facing and lining pieces together

That’s quite a bit to do, especially catchstitching the hair canvas to the facings (which has to be done by hand), so I will probably skip the dyeing this weekend and work on the jacket instead.

Meanwhile, I have been thoroughly enjoying a new blog, And Then We Set It On Fire, done by a group of bloggers intent on exploring many fiber arts techniques, one per month.  There’s a new post every day or two, always with something interesting they’ve tried.  Currently they’re on batik – I think next month is ink.  This is not a how-to blog written by experts; it’s written by people who are new to the technique, which makes it all the more interesting.  Their enthusiasm and willingness to share results – positive and negative – is refreshing.

After a long talk with Sharon on the construction of this jacket, I’ve decided that people think about fashion completely wrong.  It’s not an art; it’s engineering.  It’s figuring out the appearance and movement of a given piece, then choosing materials and building internal structure that will give you the look and function that you want.  I don’t know why it’s considered an art form – perhaps because fashion is “aesthetic” (but then so is the Eiffel Tower), perhaps just because it’s a girly thing ““ but the underpinnings are as purely engineering as building a bridge.  And frankly, it seems about as complicated to learn as any other form of engineering (says the former mathematician!).

At any rate, after discovering that we had put the front fastening in the wrong place initially, we had to make quite a few changes.  So I am making”“ are you surprised? ““ yet another muslin.  But this is probably the last one.  I am taking the opportunity to calculate the perfect placement of stripes in the outfit.  I have copied the pattern pieces onto tracing paper, and drawn dashed lines to indicate the borders between the stripes.  I started by making a single stripe perfectly centered down center front, and then drew the rest of the stripes on center front.  Then I figured out where to put the stripes on the shoulder of each back piece so they would align with the stripes on center front.  And put the stripes on the facings, the back facings, the sleeves, etc. ““ lots of etc!  But it was interesting to see how all the rest of the stripe placement was immediately determined by the placement of that very first stripe.

This took me all morning, but now I have a pretty good idea of how to cut so that the lines match up.  I will still have to be careful when I actually cut the fabric, as these things are never 100% accurate ““ but it’s a good start.  I am now cutting out the pieces of the muslin, drawing lines on the muslin to reflect the stripes on the pattern pieces.  This will show whether my pretty pattern pieces work out when sewn.

Meanwhile, we are starting to test interfacings.  Sharon gave me a couple of interfacings with instructions to test each by cutting a 6×12″ piece of fabric, cutting a 6×6 square of interfacing and fusing or sewing it to one end of the fabric, then flipping the other end back over to form a “sandwich”.  Then we’ll evaluate the feel of the sandwich and see whether it’s appropriate to use as the jacket interfacing.  She gave me four interfacings ““ two woven fusible, one very stiff craft interfacing, and some hair canvas ““ and I’ll be applying those.  This will require “wasting” about one foot of precious handwoven yardage, but I keep reminding myself that it’s necessary, and that I have plenty of fabric!

And, of course, the loom is now at AVL, undergoing the upgrade.  It was an uneventful seven hour drive, and quite pleasant, with the mustard blooming in bright yellow patches amongst the vineyards, and acres and acres of blooming fruit trees.  I’m glad it’s over, though, and I won’t have to go back until I pick up the loom next Monday.

Once I finish the muslin, I plan to have a little fun with dyes.  I have tools for batik, instructions for stencils, and some silk and cotton fabrics on the way.  This weekend, if I have time, I plan to take half of Sunday to play with various dye techniques.  I also have a new copy of Quilter’s Academy: Freshman Year, and plan to start studying piecing and quilting techniques in that.  It is a book by Harriet and Carrie Hargrave that gives a rigorous introduction to quilt-making.  I don’t expect that quilting will be a huge part of my work, but I do want to understand the techniques, because I have a sneaky feeling they will come in handy later.