Purple Passion Is All Together Now. . . .

Next up is the final assembly. I start by stitching the shoulder seams, trimming to 1/4", and pressing well:



I run gathering threads along the top of the sleeve cap and on the bottom edge of the sleeve. Pull up the sleeve cap gathers, and sew to the dress, being careful to keep the back yoke facings free:



I love these little sleeves. They are so full and girly! I pull up the bottom sleeve edge gathers and sew it to the bias binding. You can see that I press under the raw long edge of the bias binding. I trimmed this seam, too, after the photo.



Then I stitched the side seams in one fell swoop, from the sleeve down to the hem. I turned the bias binding under on the sleeves and whipped it down. If I had had enough space to work in, I would have stitched the sleeve bindings in the ditch, too. But it's a wee little thing!

Next up is buttonholes. Since I still haven't finished the neck edge, I marked off the seam allowance. Then I measured the width of my buttonholer foot from the needle to the edge. Mine's a half inch, and since I want that buttonhole foot to sit flat, I move up/down one half inch from the seam allowance, not the seam. Just in case you didn't know, this is the standard placement for buttonholes on ready to wear. Go measure!

I marked off three buttonholes. Stitched the top one. Stitched the bottom one. Stitched the one in the middle. And then.....I realized this had happened:



Do you see it? The middle one is WAY out of line with the others. How did this happen?

Well, I'll tell you. While I was in the sewing room, happily sewing along, a wrestling match broke out in the bedroom next door. This is a fairly common occurance here in Testosterone Heaven, where we all reside. This time there were only two contenders, the two teenage boys. There's usually three or four--there's another brother and of course, the Current World Wrestling Champion, their daddy.

So I'm buttonholing away and yelling out "Yall stop that" and "Cut that out" and "Did yall hear me?" and "I'm talking to you", until I finally worked all the way up to the dreaded "Don't make me come in there!"

That last one usually puts a stop to the event, regardless of who is about to pin whom. Because they KNOW that if I am forced to come in there I won't leave empty-handed. I'll bring out the cell phones, gameboys, X boxes, whatever it takes. And I'll keep it.

And that's my story.

Of course I had to take it out. You would have too, wouldn't you? It took 45 seconds to put that sucker in there, and 45 minutes to take it out. But I'm happy now.




I put bias binding on the neck edge. Now all that's left is to sew on three buttons and put in the hem!

Any guesses as to what this might be?



And here is the the proof that fusible knit interfacing really fuses well. Told ya.