Button & Snap

Tool time: straight pins

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Through working in theater, I’ve learned that with pins, size is everything. Though I learned to sew using the normal dressmaker pins that you probably have a home, which are an inch in length, but when I started my first job at an opera, I encountered new pins. Bigger and better pins – 1¾” long instead of the normal 1″ length, with slightly larger heads. These pins are so much easier to use that…

Refashioned felt vest: lapped seams and darts

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So, I’ve got the shell of the vest together. I did the lapped seams, as promised. They’re a little hard to see here – black is always difficult to photograph. Can you see the piecing seams? It’s the seam coming from the armhole to the middle of the (fake) welt pocket and the seam at the outer edge of the pocket at the bottom. ‘m so pleased with how they came out. The top seam sort of looks like princess…

Fashioning a new vest out of an old pea coat…

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Check out this pea coat. It’s nice and basic, but I’ve had it for almost 10 years, it’s looking pretty threadbare, and it’s just not keeping up with Berlin …uuhh… late summers (it, like me, is from Southern California). So this year in August, I was freezing one evening in my coat and I decided it was time for it to become something new…. a felted wool vest! I used the Franzi vest pattern from Burdastyle for…