Matching Plaid
When working with plaid you have one of two options. Either you can do what all the ready-to-wear manufacturers do and disregard the need for matching the pattern properly, or you can take the definitely-more-professional-but-also-crazy method and meticulously match your plaid. Any guesses as to which route I ended up taking?!
Ok, so there was never any question as to whether or not I would match my plaid, to me it just seems crazy to spend money on such a beautiful high quality fabric and then not do things properly! However, believe me my friends, there is a good reason why high street chains do not take the trouble to match their plaid: it is seriously hard work!
There are all kinds of different tutorials online about how to match plaid, but I decided to use this brilliant how to by the incredibly talented seamstress Tasia of Sewaholic. Tasia's technique (in the most basic sense) involves pinning through your double layer of fabric, matching the plaid at every pin. And we are talking a lot of pins here, and a lot of time spent!
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| Pins, pins everywhere... |
The experience of pinning my entire length of wool fabric before cutting out my pieces made me appreciate just how time consuming working with plaid really is! And then of course you have to make sure that every one of your pieces is cut so that the plaid will align nicely at the seams, and the the center back of the cape and the collar match, and that the interfacing line up nicely with the outside of the cape, the list could go on and on! But when you see each one of your fabric pieces laid out and perfectly aligned and matched it's really worth it (at least for obsessive compulsives like me!).
And after all that plaid matching you are ready to cut out your fabric pieces and start sewing! And the first step in my tailoring is going to be...
Bound Buttonholes
This is not my first foray into bound buttonholes, but my previous attempts haven't always been the prettiest of things! This time I was determined to get them right and take my time with them. I used this great tutorial from the Coletterie, which worked really well for me. Before I have used a method in which you make a window in the fashion fabric and form a separate little fabric window behind it, but I much prefer the Coletterie patch method in which these two steps are combined into one. All four (I have added an extra buttonhole after lengthening the hem) buttonholes are looking very pretty indeed!
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| My small but perfectly formed bound buttonhole :) |
Things are going well with my Cape Adventure so far, next time I'll start on my pad stitched collar!
Bye for now!
Katie xxx
4 comments:
You're storming ahead. Very impressive!
Oooh, your bound buttonholes are looking excellent and matching your plaids so carefully will be well worth it for sure!
These posts have been so interesting and inspiring I want to make myself a swanky coat. I won't as I already have too many Christmas things in the queue.
Looking good! This is going to be gorgeous!
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