So. I had six projects I wanted to sew with equal enthusiasm, and couldn't choose which to do first.
I decided to roll a die.
So there we go: 2!
"Patch Waist A" means another of those waist cincher(ish) items made from altered Simplicity 5006, with silly appliqué patches.
But I hadn't thought it through any farther than that.
Which is why this also qualifies as an Unwise Sewing Adventure!
The first problem to solve was how to approach the act of attaching the appliques across the boning channels. It's me, so hand sewing was not an option, and I was also not enamored with the idea of attaching them with heavy duty craft adhesive. I poked the internet to see how others had handled the idea, and found only one blog with a similar project. Ohhhh, OK: Put the boning in the lining! Would I have thought of that myself? Well, I hadn't at 3 in the morning when I first thought of the project.
I wanted to use leftover fabric for the shell and lining, with no preconceived ideas about colors or prints. I had recently emptied a former catch-all storage bin and found large scraps left over from making a jumper (and hat) last year; the normal stash yielded fabric leftover from a shirt I made in March--fabric that was irregularly faded and so completely unsuitable for making something highly visible and large. There was plenty of both of these fabrics to cut the pieces for this project.
As before, the panels sewed together quickly. I put the strength layer--some thin synthetic twill from a long-ago thrift store fabric grab bag--as underlining on the lining side.
Then it was time to choose appliqués...which was initially somewhat overwhelming. I have accumulated a lot of appliqués over the years. I even used a lot of them in a project I can find no photographic record of--dark gray cottony woven synthetic base with black leopard print flocking fabric made into a jacket onto which I had sewn loads of less-valued appliqués to all the pieces before construction. It was rather chaotic. (And I got compliments on it.) After the weight gain, I picked all the appliqués off and put them back into my stash.
So I started by approaching this with the same idea of chaos, but I realized I've gotten a lot more strict about not-wearing certain colors in the intervening years, so I shuffled things around until a color scheme arose
I sewed them on in stages, starting with white thread, then switching to red, and a bit of green and black. I attached most of the embroidered appliqués with a long narrow zigzag (narrow enough to fit in my straight stitch foot), although some of them made more sense to attach with a straight stitch. The appliqués cut from fabric were attached with satin stitching.
Honestly: I would have liked to use more appliques. This coverage isn't bad, but it lacks chaos. (I thought I had some star-shaped studs and was ready to add those all over, but that was my imagination...or I'll find them sometime in the future, not at all where I thought they'd be.)
If I had changed the color scheme, I could have added more, of course, but...didn't wanna. So, no chaos for his project.
The lobster patch was an old Maine souvenir (part of the friend's relative's destash), but I took the time to pick out the embroidered MAINE because the idea of Vintage Travel Kitsch wasn't as funny to me as the idea of Just A Lobster.
The lining is stitched with the thread I used for the previous project, because it was still in the machine and I know no-one would see the lining while this was being worn. This went on to be a "use up all the odds and ends of bobbin thread" project, too, with all the bobbin oddness going into the back of the appliqué stitching.
If I had picked out the appliqués first, I might have picked a lining that coordinated with them. Maybe.
I constructed this overall just like the previous versions, installing the zipper, applying the top bias tape, inserting the long zip tie boning, and attaching the bottom bias binding.
It's of course not perfect, and it's not as chaotic as it could have been, but it's fun and it's finished (and it fits) and those are good things.
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