Another Pattern, Another Muslin

So being as the vintage jeans jacket pattern isn't going to work for the corduroy and minky, I had to find another pattern that required only 1.5 yards of 60" fabric, which severely limits my options. This is the second candidate, and the one I will use, if I can get a couple of kinks worked out.

I made a muslin (out of black fleece and some scraps of houndstooth flannel from my jumper) up yesterday. There are reasons that I rarely cut out and finish sewing anything in one day. For one, the quality of my work suffers as I get frustrated and in a hurry. If I spread things out, and work at them at my leisure, I don't get nearly so upset about things like, oh, redoing the pockets three times before I get it right.

However, this did turn out wearable, and I like it except for a few imperfections that were totally caused by me doing a lined jacket as unlined, without a clear understanding of how that affected the construction and shaping of the pattern pieces. I had to make several "design decisions" like edging the front with bias tape made from the houndstooth. I also lengthened the sleeves, but not quite enough. They need another inch or two. I can eke another inch out by letting out the 1" hem and making some more bias tape to edge the sleeves.

I think it looks cute with the jumper that it matches, too, and the collar gives it a very retro look. The best part, though, is the buttons. They're like giant pound symbols.

McCall's 5007, by the way, appears to have just gone out of print, but Etsy seller backalleydesign has some new and uncut in her store, for very reasonable prices (they are listed in a batch with three other patterns, but when I asked she was willing to break the batch up and sell me only the ones I wanted).

Buttons!

My husband's grandmother, who is really awesome, gave me a bunch of her fabric scraps and rick rack and trim and buttons. I still left her with some buttons, and I took a jar full. I already had some buttons of my own, accumulated over the years (I've always had a fascination with them). My mother has a button box, plus a bunch of buttons inherited from her mother and grandmother. My husband even had a couple of tiny jars of buttons his mom had given him for repairing his shirts.

Which makes me think: Do companies even need to manufacture buttons? I think there are enough buttons already in existence to take us well into the next century, at least. Since less people seem to sew than in years past, the existing button stockpile, plus those that we can take off of discarded clothing, should do it for us. Of course, then the matter becomes finding the exact perfect shade of buttons, which is harder to do when you can't run down to the store and pick one out. :)

Maybe we should start an international panel to investigate the stockpiling of buttons.