Vogue 1385 continues

This past week and the upcoming few days are busy ones as we here in the US get prepared for Thanksgiving Day. It is my favorite holiday. What could be better? Time spent with family, no gifts or financial obligations involved, just appreciating those special people in our lives who love us the most. Throw in incredible food and fabulous flavors all in a pretty casual atmosphere, and it is wonderful. I hope all my US friends are enjoying their prep for the holiday. We got the cleaning out of the way yesterday and as we speak Salted Caramel Pecan Pie bars are in the oven. If you could just smell my kitchen right now...............

In between playing pastry chef and laundress I have been painting the pieces of my jacket. I've decided on the metallic blue dye from Jacquard. When both color samples were put on my shoulder, the silver sample had much more contrast and I wanted a bit more subtlety. The camera flash seems to pick up the metallic paint, making it sparkle more than it appears in real life. It truly is the more subtle of the two options. I am still not sure if it will button or not.

What I am doing first is marking each pattern piece, all those darts,  on the wrong side, ! Then I put down some heavy waxed paper on the cutting table. It is actually the sheet that remains after all the labels are removed from it. I get these by the ton at work as we use a lot of labels and they are very handy for making stencils or any situation where you want to block off something on fabric. One of those sheets gets taped down first to the table to prevent bleed through , then the garment piece is taped to it. On top of that is taped the stencil. which I play with to get a pleasing placement. I then place another one of those "label" sheets on the piece of fabric so no errant bits of paint make their way over.

Now I can paint. I am using the Jacquard metallic fabric dye , a stencil brush, and a shishkabob stick. The SKB stick is great for holding down tiny flaps of the stencil without getting paint on my hands. That allows me to get a sharp edge to the parts of the stencil that want to flip up. It's a pretty lacy stencil. Each piece gets two coats of dye. I did this to my samples, two coats of dye, and that worked best. Because it is a dye, the fabric stays nice and soft where it is applied. And guess what? It really dyes. I took my samples and washed them and ironed them and washed them again. Solid as a rock so I am pleased with that.  No heat setting necessary, but I ironed them anyway just for my own peace of mind. 

Another thing I did was to cover up a half inch of the seam allowances so I wouldn't' be sewing through the design. I just didn't know how the needle would react so played it safe and left the design out of the SAs. 

Right now my last sleeve is waiting for its second coat. Gotta get those pecan pie bars out of the oven first..................Bunny