Colorways by Vicki Welsh

I totally forgot to post on Saturday but there wouldn’t have been much to it anyway. I did exactly two things this weekend.

First, I weeded. A lot. This is both sides of the back of our house. The guy who built it pushed the house as far back on the property as possible without going over the cliff. the property goes almost straight down from here to the river. This is a 10 acre lot. There was no good reason for that. He could have moved it up 50 yards and we would have had a backyard. Instead, we live on a cliff. This hill is too steep to do anything with so we planted it years ago with creeping juniper and it works great as a ground cover. It still gets a lot of weeds and I haven’t tended it in at least 3 years. I should have taken before photos because it looked like tall grass and even had a couple of trees in it! It took 3 mornings (before it got too hot) but I eventually got it done. It hasn’t looked this good in years.

My reward from spending time in Satan’s armpit with sweat dripping from my nose, was to come in the air-conditioned sewing room and work on my jacket! I finished it yesterday. I’m really happy with it. You can see the black dotted fabric peeking out arounds the collar and facing. Hopefully, now, the dark buttons make sense.

I thought this jacket would be a summer jacket but it’s too heavy for that. I think it will be a great Autumn or early-Spring jacket. My friend gave me this fabric and I’m sure it was a home dec fabric. But I washed it and it softened up really nicely. I had intended to make it shorter but it made me look too wide. I stuck with the same length as the feedsack jacket.

Because this fabric is so thick, I made one change to the back. I gathered the back to the yoke instead of doing the pleat. You will see a center seam in the back, that’s because this fabric was too narrow to cut on the fold.

The instructions for the jacket are very good so it was easy to put together.

I left the side open a few inches at the hem just to add another detail. If you are interested in the pattern, I did not make the cover view. That sleeve is just too big for a short woman. I basically did view A without patch pockets. I do have side seam pockets because a jacket is useless without pockets!

The one thing I had problems with was buttonholes. The variation in the thickness of the fabrics caused the buttonhole foot to hang up. I ripped out 2 partial buttonholes before I remembered that I have some Sulky Solve. I wrapped a piece around the edge and didn’t have another problem.

That’s the end of my garment sewing for a while but I do plan to make a Tamarack jacket this fall. I have an old quilt that I think would make cute Tamarack jacket. I also have a very old quilted suede-look fabric that would work well too.

If all goes well I may have another finish tomorrow. I have a crochet shawl that’s been hanging around for a while and I’d like to get it wrapped up.