"You want me to do WHAT?"

Last night after dinner I thought I’d go work on my blue Pendleton jacket. I knew the next step was to create and attach the upper collars (that will cover most of the satin lapels), and so 2 pieces for each lapel, plus the back (collar) facing, it shouldn’t have taken more than a half hour or so. Two hours later, I was mentally exhausted and I felt like I’d come away from an entire day’s marathon session.

I know I only just moaned about this pattern yesterday, but I ended up doing something last night I’ve never, ever done before in sewing: I got out a ruler and measured two pieces to see if it was actually physically possible to join them.

The seam in question:

Last night after dinner I thought I’d go work on my blue Pendleton jacket. I knew the next step was to create and attach the upper collars (that will cover most of the satin lapels), and so 2 pieces for each lapel, plus the back (collar) facing, it shouldn’t have taken more than a half hour or so. Two hours later, I was mentally exhausted and I felt like I’d come away from an entire day’s marathon session.

I know I only just moaned about this pattern yesterday, but I ended up doing something last night I’ve never, ever done before in sewing: I got out a ruler and measured two pieces to see if it was actually physically possible to join them.

The seam in question:

The blue piece is the under portion of the upper collar (yeah, the terminology made things that much more confusing when dealing with BWOF’s “BWTF Instructions”!), which is supposed to join to the long, curved edge of the back facing. It actually is possible (after checking with a ruler), but by god it was difficult, and I actually had to cheat and clip the corners before I sewed the sides.

After some swearing, it looked like this:

But it just gets better – you’re actually looking at this upside-down. The facing actually points down, not up, so I had to rip out my label and resew it once I’d pinned everything to the jacket body and realised that this particular back facing defies all known convention and has its arch exactly opposite to every pattern on earth!

So you can see why I might have been annoyed by this part in the proceedings. More seam ripper, more resewing, and an awful lot of understitching, pinching together seam allowances and sewing from the inside and generally pressing the hell out of it, and I’ve FINALLY COMPLETED THE COLLARS!

Though after seeing the thickness of four layers of interfaced wool and satin, there’s no way I’m ever going to be able to get a neat buttonhole for the closure. So I’m researching closures that don’t involve holes at the moment. But seriously, this is probably the most insanely constructed pattern I’ve ever made, and I’m pretty much flying solo with their terrible instructions here. If I didn’t have such an emotional investment in the fabric (or I’d been sewing up the muslin) I’d have abandoned this altogether by now. The only thing that gives me strength to carry on is that at least I’m not doing the view sewn up in leather!!

To end this rant on a happy note, though, I thought I’d share these fun knitting billboards that Vodafone UK are plastering all over London right now. Even though I don’t knit, they make me smile whenever I walk by one!

I’ve been trying to come up with a sewing-themed one to suggest to them, but so far I’ve drawn a blank…

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