Sewing

I continued sewing the casings onto the bodices and pressed all of the casings after. I had to make sure that all the casings measured .7cm so that the metal boning would slide in perfectly. I then started sewing my smocking jacket together by sewing up the centre back and then pressed the seam open. I then sewed french seams on the sleeves of my jacket and pressed them to one side. I worked out that there were an even amount of squares on the smocking piece that i had done so i pinned the centre back through the middle square. The centre back block just fit onto the smocking piece! I then pinned all around the side seams, hem, shoulder and neck very carefully and made sure it didn't pull unevenly. I stay stitched around the areas i had pinned and then overlocked the edges off. I had to bind the hem and neck of the jacket so i cut out a piece of the Faille of about 3.8cm. I then started sewing the front of the jacket by sewing the hem and buffing it then the centre front and the shoulder. After i had sewn all pieces perfectly together i realised that i didn't put a dart in the facing of the jackets so it didn't fit which meant i had to cut out another set of facings and unpick the other facing off the jacket and re sew the new facing in! How annoying! I decided to leave the jacket for now because i was a bit frustrated. I also realised that the cups of my bodices weren't stiff enough so i unpicked each set of the cups and fused Pelham to each of them. Then i realised that i had fused some of the Pelham to the same cups which meant i didn't have a right and a left! I was not having a good day! I then unpicked all the other cups and fused the Pelham onto the cups. Went on sewing the cups together and topstitching across the seams. I completed two pink cup sets which i was pretty happy with.

I continued sewing the cups of the bodices and i managed to steam my finger whilst pressing the cups seams open which hurt! After i had completed sewing all the cups together i moved on with my jacket. I sewed and bluffed the hem then sewed the centre front and the shoulder together. I left my jacket and decided to go and find some glue to dip the ends of my metal boning to prevent the ends from rusting and ripping the fabric when its all sewn in. I also had to find some navy blue food dye the dye my waistbands so i went and bought some food dye to experiment with. The blues turned out alright but i realised that if i were to wash the skirt the blue would run which i didn't want so i would have to go on the hunt for some silk dye. I thought if i got some time this week end i would attempt to do some beading over the week end.