Tamarack Society Update: Part 03
I'm back today with some Tamarack Society progress to report on...I finished basting my coat! It took me quite a while longer than normal, though I'm not sure why. I did go about the construction in a slightly different manner so I thought I'd share what I did differently and why I did things this way.
The first, and most obvious, thing I did differently for this Tamarack is to sew the side seams of each layer together before sandwiching with my quilting. This creates a lot more fabric to work with in the quilting stage but the reason I did so is because of my quilting pattern, which I've mocked up below.
The majority of the bodice will have these zig-zag stitching lines and to me it seemed easier to quilt one entire line at once rather than as 3 separate pieces and then trying to line up the stitching lines at the side seams afterwards. Since I'll be shoving this entire piece through my machine at once and rotating it a few times while under there, I wanted to make sure I basted well enough to really hold things in place. Hence the serious basting grid going on here!
I did the same thing for the lower portion of the coat — sewing the side seams of each layer before sandwiching. Again this was because I don't want to try to align a million stitching lines when I go to sew the side seams. Typically this is the sort of thing where I think "well that's why we have arms, to hide things that don't perfectly line up across the side seams!" but I'm sort of in a 'go big or go home' mindset on this coat at the moment.
The sleeves are basted as well, though I haven't made a firm decision on the quilting pattern yet so those will likely be the last pieces I work on. I'm deciding on diagonals or straight across so I'll quilt these after I see how the top and bottom of the body look together. I'm hoping to get started on the quilting this weekend so I'll report back on whether my pre-sewing the side seams was a good idea or not. Fingers crossed it was!
