Tuesday, December 8, 2009

I am so slow

This prject seems like a never ending story.
I've just sorted out fitting my muslin. Fitting the 3 piece-sleeves took ages. My sister pointed aout that the shouders were too long. So had to shorten them.
I thought I would feel better with a little bit of ease around the biceps line and add 1/4'' around the arm at the sleeve
Here's what it looks like.Plus the sketch my sister made to help me fiitting the sleeve end.

I know I am procrastinating  because I am anxious about quilting the shell to the lining. So yesterday, instead of cutting the fabric and lining I read everything could find concerning this step.
I must say that Claire Schaeffer's Couture Techniques is realy helpful. Eventually I ended making a swap following her method :

1 Cutting rectangles for each section from the shell fabric and the lining fabric about 4in. bigger than the finished garment section

2 Roughly outline the section shape ont the right side of the rectangles

3 Lay the lining wrong side up and top it with the fabric side up aligning grainlines.

4 Pin the sections together on on the intended quilting lines.

5 With diagonal stitches baste between the pinned rows and remove the pins.

That's where I stopped.

Today I will machine quilt the sample and that's where I need your help, please.


Some of you are using a walking foot. What is it and can it be donne with a normal foot?

The dominant colour of my tweed is off white and the lining looks like hand painted splashes (does it make sense to you?) of acid green and  deep purple. I intend to use invisible thread on the lining side because I fear that the off white thread that I want to use for the shell might be disgracious. Does it sounds correct to you? Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance.


Here are my fabrics. Forget about solid fuschia.

Marie-Noëlle

8 comments:

  1. Your jacket is going to be superb, and all that fitting will pay off. Is that a wool tweed, or a cotton one? Just curious. Beautiful, beautiful lining.

    A walking foot is one that has teeth on top to pull the top fabric layer to the back as you sew. To get one, go to a sewing machine store and ask for one. Ask for a demo before you take it home (when I got mine, I had no idea how to install it). Bring one of your machine's ordinary feet along, so the seller can tell if you have a low or high shank.

    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not much of a quilter, but I suspect you could get away with just lowering the pressure of your presser foot (there's usually a big screw type thing on the top of your machine). This would keep the foot from displacing your top layer. Why not do a test to see how much the fabric shifts? It may be something you can control with your hands as you feed the fabric through the machine.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for your support, my sewing mojo is coming back.
    Digs the fabric seems to be made of manmade fibre and cotton. It was €5 for a yard.
    The lining is silk. I visited your blog and i've seen that you love colourful linings too...

    ReplyDelete
  4. There're a beautiful fabrics! I'm waiting the next post!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Faye, I made a test yesterday with a regular and the result is alright.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Your fabric choices are beautiful, and as Digs pointed out, your fitting will pay off in the end. I've made several of these jackets, and have taken Susan Khalje's class on constructing a Chanel jacket using the couture method. All this is to say that I've got some experience behind my recommendations. I'd recommend against using clear nylon thread for your quilting. Use a fine cotton or even fine cotton embroidery thread.
    Susan K recommends against using a different color in the bobbin as it may show in the top if the stitches aren't perfectly balanced, however if you really don't like the look of the white thread showing on your lining, try a pale yellow.
    Metrosene makes a cotton machine embroidery thread that is wonderful for quilting these boucles, and the thread will be less obtrusive on your (beautiful) silk.
    I thought I had a picture in my flickr set on construction but evidently the one on pinning the lining to the boucle before quilting didn't get uploaded. If you pin your vertical lines before you stitch you may experience less shifting, especially if you're not using a walking foot.
    Have fun with it.

    ReplyDelete