random thoughts – Day 2,251 (Saturday) – swept

The weather, one of my favorite topics to whine about lately, was greatly improved today. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and windows were opened. It was everything I hope for in a spring day. There were town wide yard sale events in nearby towns, a yard sale in my neighborhood, and a farmers market opening, but I did none of these things. I got swept up in the purple velvet vest sewing project.

The day’s goal was to finish the vest. When the side seams were taken in and the neckline reshaped, the arm holes were affected and needed to be expanded. The gold trim on the edges of the vest had been removed in several work areas, and remained sewn in place at the back neck edge. Today, the arm holes were fixed and the trim was ready to be reset. There was a challenge.

The neckline had been reshaped from a straight vee neck to a curved line inspired by the belly dance Turkish vest design. When the trim was being reset, there was no longer enough, because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line (old neckline), but I now had a longer curved one. There were two gaps in visible places where the trim ran out.

A message was sent to my talented and brilliant sewist friend with a photo of the trim gaps. She replied, “Space to sew on interesting notions?” I did the palm to forehead “Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?” thing and sprang into action.

Gaps in the trim!

Scrap fabric from the big skirt project was fetched, which is, coincidentally, the perfect colors for the vest. In the space of 40 minutes, scrap fabric was lined with scrap fusible interfacing to provide support (proving that my tendency to save practically everything pays off eventually). From the scraps, paisley and floral motifs were cut out. These were pinned on the vest in the two bare spots, and elsewhere to make it look like a deliberate design.

Fray Check would help keep fabric edges from fraying. Surprise! When a bottle of Fray Check sits in a drawer for long enough (decades?), the liquid solution becomes a solid. The WalMart website was checked for the availability of the magic stuff, and a trip made to the store. This ate up a solid hour of prime sewing time, because it seems to be impossible for me to enter WalMart, find the needed item and exit immediately. The pattern drawer didn’t have any new costume patterns. The clearance aisle yielded a spool of trim for $1.50. The bakery discount rack was empty. The sweet potato fries were too high up on the freezer shelf to reach.

Back at home, there was an epic battle to get the cap off the new bottle of Fray Check. When I couldn’t unscrew it by hand, I tried my back teeth, which hurt but didn't help with the cap. Running the cap under hot water finally worked. The effort included swearing and the composition of an imaginary letter to the Dritz company about the excessively tight cap.

Almost done.

Finally, all the edges of the motifs were treated with the Fray Check and set to dry while I finished trimming up loose threads on the vest. The hand sewing of the motifs was slow going. It took a couple hours to stitch a paisley shape at each shoulder area, which isn’t even where the trim gaps were. 

It wasn’t quite finished today, but almost (which really only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and thermo nuclear warfare). Definitely tomorrow it can be completed after dance group, unless the gorgeous weather on tap sweeps me up in a hike or some outdoor frolic.