Thursday, June 10, 2010

It's alive!!!!

Well, it's working at least! My long-wished-for Gresist buttonholer, far from being in "good working condition", required two overnight spa treatments marinating in CRC and more than two hours over two days to clean off the old toffee-like grease with cotton buds (q-tips), rags and toothpicks (they turned out to be the best cleaning tools). After which I held my breath and fitted it to my machine and almost closed my eyes as I pressed the pedal.....



......and round she went! My first attempt is the straight one at the top of the pic below. It skipped a few stitches, including one big chunk on it's first round, but I just went around again and covered it better and after that it didn't skip any more stitches. Then I put in the keyhole template (which is what I wanted all along) and made two of those - each of the ones below has been stitched around twice and I think they look lovely. I am puzzled though by the odd extra bit at the top of each one - when I went around the second time I got the lovely rounded top and I can't figure why it starts like this. It's easy to pick out those couple of stitches, but I'm totally baffled as to why it does this. Apart from those few stitches the second round was exactly on top of the first.

As I showed them to David when he came for lunch I commented that it seems a bit weird that just a few stitches on a scrap of fabric can give me so much pleasure. He totally understands. Which may be why I married him ;-)

And in other news, I have now stencilled one panel of my Vogue dress. The design came from a beautiful book of William Morris designs for applique. Applique designs frequently lend themselves really well to stencilling, and I love these!

This panel is the front (believe it or not). The stencilled design will go from left shoulder down to right side.


The colours aren't great in this photo - dodgy light and basic camera. The red is more of a blood-red than the bright red ink (due to the grey base fabric) and the silver is metallic. On some angles, in some lights, the silver fades out of sight. I love how the design differs depending on your view. If I wanted the the colour to be less influenced by the base fabric I'd need at least one more coat, but this is exactly what I wanted so I stopped at two.

4 comments:

  1. I'm intrigued by your dress. Are you using fabric paints. I'd love a buttonwhole machine. Mine sewing machine does them, but not well and will not take large buttons.

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  2. wow that stencil is coming up a treat - I love how the bottom leaves are connected with that twirl. Thank god the buttonholer worked!

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  3. Yay for a working buttonholer!! I bet if you started the keyhole buttonhole at the bottom you wouldn't get that wonky bit.
    Your dress is going to be amazing. I can't wait to see the finished product!

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  4. Hurrah for the buttonholer! The keyholes are especially neat, but both versions look professional.

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