for those with guts: lotsa innards!

 

back as promised with lacy guts, and just to keep things status quo, i am also once again only 10 % done with my look for next week's final round of project sewn!  YIIIIKES.  keepin' it real.  should i be so lucky, of course.  i'd like to say, quite honestly, the ladies i'm playing with are amazing, and it has been soooo inspiring to sew "against" them.  but really for the most part, i feel like i'm sewing with them.

  

alright no time for waxing poetic!  that 10% crazy currently on my dressform ain't gonna finish itself, especially as the midnight elves i ordered are out of stock.  damn walmart.

here, for your viewing pleasure, is le armhole, from the outside.  every bit of that curve was cut, pieced, and handsewn to make the armsyce, and the opposite side is an exact match.  once i decided on the jigsaw piece i wanted, i cut its mirror image out as well, so i'd be ready for the next side.

opposite side!  TOTALLY PIECED!  y'all, i'm kind of monumentally proud of that.  i'm also working on too little sleep and too little vodka, so take that patting on the back as you will.

speaking of piecing, i did take shots mid process to keep track of where those bits were going, because really, once sewn in, the seams vanished and i couldn't find where i'd started.  here's an example of a before/after, the only shot that turned out bright enough at 2 in the AM for public consumption.

2AM.  that's an hour made for many things, and when there's a ruggy to be had, stitching is not one of them.    

okay.  let's rest our eyes with the fiesta guts for a hot second.

i love the look of that hem! teeheeeeee!  the super wide, hot pink horsehair is nestled inside, stitched to the satin bias tape, which was then handsewn to the skirt, in the littlest stitches i could manage.  i once wore a 1950s style silk dress in a musical, and every time i twirled, my heel would catch in the hem and take me down, because of the GREAT BIG GALUMPHING BLINDSTITCHING.  had i known how to sew back then i mighta fixed it myself.  so. teeny hemstitching, please.

some peeps asked how i got the stripes/chevrons to match.  i cut each pattern piece out singly-- nothing on the fold, and used several colored pens to draw directly onto the tissue pattern, marking where the boldest of stripes started and stopped.  that helped me match up my mirror images.  when pinning pieces together, i made sure the pin was inserted exactly where two stripes met, and that those points were the same on each side--sort of the same principle as the way some (me included) like to sew a dart, pinning directly on the seam line rather than perpendicular.  

fortunately, in the midst of the stripes craze, i had the perfect neutral color already waiting in my stock of serger thread: turquoise. i have eight different shades of neutral, and none of them are black or white.  or grey, for that matter.  

grey matter. heheheheheheheeeeeh.

okay, obviously what's left of my wits is going fast, it's crazy eddie's up in here, here come the rest of the lacy guts yeahyeahyeah:

here's the shoulder seam, from the inside.  on the reverse (front) it is equidistant from where an actual shoulder seam should lie, so the entire shoulder is almost a little pad, and sits perfectly centered.

from the front: the back wraps around and is stitched to the "shoulder pad."

hey whaddaya say we go hunting for that sleeve seam again?

I STILL CAN'T FIND IT!!!

phew.  if you'd like to peep the whole outfit on, clickety here, and if you'd like to vote over at project sewn, clickety here!   see y'all on the flipside, and many happy clinks of my imaginary glass of 9am vodka for staying with me this far!!