A Promise is a Promise

I promised last week that I would have photos of Vogue 1169 for you by early this week. It is now early this week, and I am not finished with Vogue 1169. Let me explain.

Covered buttons are doing me in. The fabric is slippery, thick and fray-ey, and all around stupid. So to cover a button (which I have never previously attempted) is a task that is beyond my level of skill. I fumbled around with it, I looked online for tutorials and tips, tried those tutorials and tips, and still came up empty handed. No covered buttons for me.

*sigh*

As a result, in the meantime I am weighing my options. I could find a similarly colored fabric that is lighter weight and not as slippery to cover my buttons with, I could keep trying with the fabric I have (the cons of that is that it would require a lot of repentance later for my use of profanities), or I could give up on the idea of covered buttons and just buy some that would work well with the suit.



But since I promised photos, I will give you photos. The projected is finished, aside from sewing on buttons and doing a final wash and press.

This is the jacket. There are shiny spots from irresponsible pressing, which will come out in the wash. The fit is pretty good (albeit a bit tight), and I adore the seaming and piping and decorative hand stitching. There are so many details that I love.

This is one of the welt pockets (again disregard the shine of the fabric). The pockets were interesting to construct. I don't think I've ever actually constructed anything so intricate. The piping, the pocket lining (it is a functional pocket, although small), the welt... It was interesting and required a lot of pressing to get things to lay just right.

The collar was also interesting and fun to construct. And I love the detail of the piping. It really adds something special.

At the back, there is a little pleat in the peplum. It is cute, however this fabric lays like a tarp, so to ensure that the pleat doesn't stick straight out I tacked it down. It is not a free flowing pleat.





And then we have the skirt. The fit is not my favorite (there's a bit of poofiness in the abdominal area which serves only to emphasize my pudge), but by the time I figured that out I had already done all the hand-stitching, and in accordance with true Gordita nature, I decided that an ill-fitting skirt was better than ripping out and redoing all those stitches.

Would you want to redo all those stitches?

And just like the pleat in the peplum, this little detail on the back of the skirt is tacked down because otherwise it would stick straight out and look dumb.

I love that the lining is fuchsia. It's like a dirty little secret only I (and everyone else who reads this) know.



So, my summary on this pattern is as follows: I learned new techniques (I had never worked with piping before, nor had I ever done pick stitching), I love the details, and I feel like I accomplished something by sewing this up. The cons are this: as with so many projects, I picked lame fabric that wears weird (BUT, it WAS on sale, so...), and the fit of the skirt is stupid around the tummy.



Once I figure out the button issue, I will post photos of the suit with me in it. In the meantime, I've been working on Vogue 1086, and was able to fight my naturally lazy nature and actually rip out stitches where I had made some (a lot of) mistakes. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of myself for that.