Thursday, June 30, 2011

Little bit of progress, little bit of setback

I don’t have pictures at the moment, but I replaced all the nail heads on my chopines; I removed all the plain headed ‘pins’ (actually scrapbooking brads) and replaced them with honest-to-goodness decorative nail heads.  The effect is very subtle, but I like the new look, and the pins are much, much more stable.

Also, I mentioned the other day that I’m having problems with my sleeves…..if I can get through two sleeves without *$%&#ing up, the design looks like this:

IMAG0020

I’m very quickly running out of fabric, so I’m thinking it may be time for a Plan B.  (Gotta figure out what that would be!)  If I had unlimited fabric of this color, I would bend it to my will and make it work No Matter What, but since I’m running so low, I’m scared of continuing and ending up with no sleeves at all.

I spent a little while last night making pearl ‘buttons’ for the coat.  I actually wanted to use decorative headpins, but all I had on hand were plain ole flat tops.  I made a few ‘buttons’ with just the large pearl bead and head pin, but found that the head of the pin kept wanting to pull all the way through.  No Bueno!

I went back to my stash and experimented with a bunch of different small beads to use as a ‘cap’, and settled on a small pearl.  Not the best/prettiest solution, but 1) it works 2) is stash.

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Now for the final test.  Here is the trim with the bead buttons in place:

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I still really wish I hadn’t made the trim mistake, however, with the buttons may be slightly less noticeable.  (I would be putting a crystal underneath the bottom most button to continue the pattern repeat)

So, what say you?  Can I get away with it, or should I plan on carefully snipping and re-sewing?

3 comments:

  1. I think the pearl buttons look great! With the crystal sewn on, the "mistake" will be barely noticeable.

    I'd say keep going with the stamped sleeves, and maybe start hunting for more of the same fabric, if possible? Or just come up with something else amazing, which you always do!

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  2. It looks awesome with the stamping.  What causes the messup?  Would it just be easier to do with an x-acto knife, or is it something else?

    Here's something that just occured to me: you could stamp the fabric first before you cut out the sleeves.  That way, you could make little adjustments in your sleeve pattern if there is a less-than-perfect stamp job in some places, in order to avoid it or put it somewhere i won't show (like under the armpit or something).  It means you will do at least a small amount of unnecessary stamping, but you can also ensure a more-or-less consistent design.

    Button effect is a win.

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