Progress is being made on the pink pelisse. It is slow, painstaking progress, but it is progress. I decided to take the pressure off myself with this one. I don’t have a deadline; no upcoming event to dress for or anything, so there’s no reason to get in a rush and stress myself out. I’m just devoting 20 to 30 minutes every couple of days to getting some little bit of something done.
This update will be all about the sleeves. I love getting creative with sleeves. They are the easiest thing to steel from one pattern to mash up with another. They are also really easy to customize and stylize to your liking.
The tricky part for me is that I’ve never done a lined sleeve. I had to imagine it, then pin it all and make sure what was in my head would actually happen in practice. I know that it’s not done correctly, but the way I did it actually went pretty smoothly. So I’m happy with it.
I wanted a little bit of poof with these, but not much. I was really looking for something very tailored. So instead of a gather, I just did an inverted box pleat (I think) in each for a slight amount of volume.
And now for the cuffs. I have the distinct feeling that the cuffs probably should have been attached to the sleeves before I put the sleeves on. Not sure though. My challenge was to attach the cuffs in a way that would hide the fact that I didn’t really know how to handle the sleeve, cuff, lining combination.
I am also realizing I did a terrible job of photographing my progress so I’ll try to describe what I did. So I tucked the cuff up the sleeve of my lining, sewing together the raw edges of the cuff and lining only. I then pulled the cuff down out of the lining. I folded the raw edge of the sleeve itself under about a quarter of an inch and then stitched it by hand to the cuff, covering up where the cuff and lining were joined. Hopefully these photos somewhat illustrate what I’m talking about.
Then the cuffs just got turned up and pressed.
It actually turned out pretty well. I’m really happy with them and the sleeves were the part I was most worried about. Feels good to have them out of the way. Next will be attaching the skirt and lining. Gotta wrap my head around that now. Always lingering in the back of my head though is the closure. I don’t want to have to do button holes. I have never done a button hole and for some reason I fear them. Maybe something clever will come to me.