kcw spring 2013 [day six]
Hour #6
1. arm binding: There has to be a least one sucky part of every sewing project, right? The dress was all smooth sailing up to this point. It was about time I hit a sucky patch. Enter the arm bindings. They seemed too large to begin with and then the directions tell you to shape them–with your iron–into a gentle curve. My words were not very gentle as I ironed and steamed and stretched those suckers all out of whack.
Now they were enormous! I wanted to throw them out and start over, but I thought I’d give my sad, stretched out arm bindings one more chance. I pinned, and pinned, and pinned some more before I sewed the bindings on. Pin to Win! Pin to Win! I say that to myself when I really want something to work and I’m worried that won’t. Sometimes it’s just wishful pinning, but other times you really pin and win. Okay, enough of my private sewing dorkiness.
And look! I won! Kind of. The arm binding went on without any tucks or weirdness, but the inside was super wavy. Probably because it was stretched all to hell (see above). I had been planning to machine stitch the whole arm binding on, but there are not enough pins in the world to make that work.
2. hand stitching: So hand stitching it was. And after I hand stitched the arm binding, I couldn’t do a machine hem. So hand stitching it was again. And wow that took me more than an hour! I am a super slow stitcher, it seems–say that 5 times fast!
