All tuckered out…

…making this flipping shirt!  Friday was lost to post-work-knackeredness, Saturday and half of Sunday were lost to the missus taking over the sewing space to armour plate some jeans.  Seriously.  She’s transferring biker armour from her old pair of jeans into a new pair, as buying new would be several hundred squid.

She’s WAY more patient and meticulous than I am, and took forever positioning and stitching the stuff into the new jeans.  VERY slow work, as she’s scared of the electric machine, and insists on using the Singer hand crank.  More or less one stitch, pause, one stitch, pause.  Painful to listen to!

Anyhew, she did a gorgeous, meticulous job, more or less quilting this foam stuff, and kevlar knitty stuff into place. She’d dismantled the side seams of the jeans, as the easiest way to get inside, plus she wanted to take them in  a tiny bit once all the padding was back in.  I got really bored, wanting to go and sew my stuff, but there just isn’t room in there, plus I like to listen to my audiobook, and she wanted to concentrate.  Mutter mutter.

She kept going til midnight on Saturday, just leaving the side seams and size tweaks for Sunday morning.

Disaster!

She ignored my advice against doing trouser alterations on the inside crotch seam…and hacked out a chunk [to make them fit better’.  You can imagine the result.  Apart from anything else, of course the Singer doesn’t zigzag or do stretch stitch, and biker jeans take some serious strain at the crotch with all the crouching and swinging a leg over. [ooer missus]

Of course, they were all pulled out of shape, pouching AND too small, and the stitching kept going.  Several tantrums ensued, and yes, I did say ‘I told you so’.  I’m like that.  The bruises will fade in time.

So we went to buy some more jeans.  And she unpicked the lot, and has sewn it all back in again.  No crotch seam alterations this time though. Sigh.

I’ve made some progress with the shirt, but it’s been slower than I’d like [it should be finished by now dammit, and the purple one too!]

Anyway.  The pintucks went very well, I even did some practice ones first, which is very unusual for me!  There are 11 on each sleeve- I just kept going, pressing and measuring after each one until I’d taken up the couple of inches I’d added in length.  I did 8 vertical pintucks on the pockets, off centre [of course it was a deliberate design decision, you can shut up.]  Hand sewn hem etc.  The only alteration I made to the pattern, apart from adding pintucks, was cutting the sleeve as one piece instead of 2, and hacking the sleeve placket from the Folkwear cowboy shirt, as I think it’s really smart.

Pockets on, button band needs to be topstitched

Yummy yummy sleeve

Inside seams are all bound with silk/cotton and felled. I really like this finish

Hand sewn hem

The collar is on, and I just need to get the sleeves in, then do buttonholes-hurrah!  Buttonholes!  And double whammy there, as the buttonholer is still set for the buttonholes on the riding jacket, and I’m moving those buttons over. Yay!

The sighing and moaning from the other room is dying down, maybe she’s nearly finished for real this time?..Right, I’m off to get those sleeves in.

To finish, a glimpse of our glorious bank holiday weather

And another of our bad kitty.  She’s brought two live mice in this weekend, but fortunately, caught them in the end and laid them out in the dining room for our pleasure.