Facing the wrong way

[janestarz]

For my Aon costume I'm still working on my vest. Not having a business to tend gives me more free time to puddle on the couch after work, and I'm not getting much more done during weeknights than I did before. It could just be winter kicking me in the keister, but work is eating up a lot of my energy.

I had intended to finish the vest yesterday, and after explaining the thought process to BigBoss and his wife on Thursdaynight I was ready to tackle the thing early Friday morning. If anyone's interested, I'll explain the thought process when I show you the vest, once it's finished. It's quite a thing to behold.

I was at my sewing machine around eight-thirty am, ready to tackle that facing that refused to co-operate. The facing on the left armscye gave me no trouble at all, but once I started to pin the facing on the other armscye I noticed that I might have sewn half of the facing upside down. I used the red poly taffeta as a facing for extra wow-factor (you don't see it, unless you move your arm, and then it's all "pop" and all) and it doesn't have a right and a wrong side. You can use it either way.

I ripped the back of the facing off and checked the grainline. Yes, it was upside down. I sewed it to the front facing, sewed it to the armscye, and flipped it to the inside. I started pinning it down and thought:
"Damn."
The front didn't want to co-operate either.

As it turned out, the front facing of the one armscye that had been giving me so much trouble was also upside down. It's a little hard to see because the piece is mostly curved and hardly has a thread that's not on the bias, but it's easy to see when you try to get everything to lie flat. *sigh*

So I ripped off the front facing of the right armscye as well, checked how it would lie best, did some three-d thinking, gave up, flipped the back facing back to the outside again, managed to figure out how to pin the two together, and finally got the facing the right side up sewn to the right armscye. *sigh*.

By this time I'd lost some of my appetite for sewing, and I can't quite recall at which time I went out for groceries, but once I returned there was a major handsewing job waiting for me. I wanted to sew the facings to the front bit down by hand using a herring-bone stitch so it wouldn't show on the outside.
After I finished watching Dollhouse (4 episodes) the facings and pockets were all sewn. By that time I was a little fed up with the costume though, so I left the buttonholes for today.

I did put the vest on for a moment, and I'm happy to report it still fits like a glove. If you take into account that as a woman you're 'allowed' to have the top button of your vest open.

Sadly, this fiasco cost a lot of time and once I finished handsewing everything I had no energy left to tackle my mother's quilt top. I wanted to get a long way with sewing the blocks together, but in the end I didn't even get started on doing that.

All in all, a very sigh-worthy day, but I wouldn't have skipped sewing the facings in the right way anyway.

Comments

[absintheskiss.livejournal.com]

We've all done it. I still put arrows on my pattern pieces, so I remember which way is up.

[anemoona.livejournal.com]

Frustrating isn't it? I hate riping things apart.
I always double check before sewing, and it's goes wrong none the less.

[janestarz.livejournal.com]

I checked it, but not thoroughly enough. But if the garment's worth it, you'll rip it apart anyway. Because it just deserves to be perfect, inside and out. It's not even the most handsewing I ever did on a piece...