More on the Jacket

This morning I sewed together all the pieces in strip 1 and strip 2. After pressing the seams down and removing some of the paper from areas that would be difficult to get to after more sewing, I pinned strip 1 to strip 2 and sewed them together. Then I removed all the paper from the second strip and pressed it well. What a difference it makes with no pins, paper or raw edges. As I'm working on this project I'm finding out tricks that really help. For instance I started out using white thread. Now I've switched to a dark thread to help find the tacking when I am undoing it. Also I don't fasten off my tacking now, I run a few stitches, about 2" over the beginning tacking and then snip off the beginning knot. This really helps because the thread just pulls out and doesn't stop at the knot.

Silk jacket - moving right along

This is the left front pinned and ready to sew together. I have enough tacked pieces to work on the rest of the jacket, so I'll be at the sewing machine for a while getting this done. It's been a great take-along in the car project. I even was able to do some tacking at the Canadian Open Golf Championship! I took lots of pinned pieces but ran out of thread before I finished. So....I had to watch the golf!

Silk jacket - update

I've made a whole pile of pieces and started pinning them into place. Just to be sure that I have the same patterns and colours on all pieces of the jacket, I'll pin everything in place before I sew.

My technicolour dreamcoat

I have a lovely stash of colourful reclaimed pieces of silk and a wonderful assortment of pretty embroidered and beaded bits waiting patiently to be used and admired in something special. Well, I have a project in mind for both. I am going to make a silk patchwork jacket and sprinkle the sparkly bits sparingly around. These are the colours I am planning to use; mostly turquoise, blues and purples.

Here are a few of the beaded bits.And this is the pattern I am going to use. As simple as I could find as i don't want the problems of collar and lapels, pockets or darts.

I don't know if this is anything like sane quilting paper piecing, but this is how I am going to do mine. I used four squares to the inch squared paper and cut strips of 3" wide. The seam allowance is 1/4" which is one square wide. I started by cutting lengths of one, two, three, four, five and six inches, 3" wide, out of the squared paper. I cut the same out of the silk using a rotary cutter. Later I changed to using pieces of silk a little larger than the paper piece just so that the silk would stay straight. I pinned and tacked the silk to the paper, sewing in between the paper edge and the first printed line (approx. the 1/8" mark). This is so when I machine sew the pieces together later, I am not sewing over the tacking line. Then I trimmed the pieces to match the paper pieces.

This is an ongoing project and I'll update my progress as it happens!