day eighty-four: last little bits

I skipped last night because I got frustrated. I was all done with the second sleeve. I trimmed and finished the seam allowances on that side and it looked fantastic. I laid it out, started taking pictures, and…

I sewed the bloody sleeve on inside out. I was so annoyed with myself. If I hadn't had to work in the morning I'd have fixed it there and then, but it was already late. Instead, I ripped out the felling stitches and went to bed.

Tonight I carefully ripped out the seam holding the sleeve in, because I had turned both seam allowances to the same side, and trimmed down the underside allowance to reduce bulk. I didn't want it to fray out before I got it sewn back together.

i took a different approach to sewing the new seam

Rather than try to sew this together with a running stitch, I drew a half inch stitch line on the edge of the sleeve with some chalk and lined it up with the fold (after I made sure it was in the right way round). Then I just stitched it in with a nice close overcast stitch — easy peasy.

After that, I fastened down the seam allowance with a herringbone stitch. It actually only took a couple of hours, including a dinner break, after which I decided to work on the center front gore. I graded down that seam allowance as well, and one side of that is felled down with a herringbone stitch. I find that works nicely with the way I need to hold the fabric — I'll try to get photos of that over the weekend.

So I'm really happy with it. Can't wait to get it completely finished and wear it. In the meantime, I'm off to bed. Tomorrow will be busy. Night, y'all.