Revelations (and sleeves)

Revelations:
1. To rip out is divine. Actually, I am now convinced that the fact that I rip out a lot more seams makes me a better seamstress. I used to be so afraid of having to rip anything out. Now, I baste many seams first and then have to rip them out, that it no longer bothers me. So I say, "to rip is inevitable - embrace it!"
2. The beauty of working with good fabric - everything works!



The sleeves: I can't believe they're finally in. I was surprised at how much fabric needed to be eased in and never thought it would work, but they actually went in quite nicely (see revelation #2 above.) The coat is now heavy and hard to work around my machine. After sewing the sleeve parts together, I cut a two inch wide piece of fleece on the bias to sew in as the sleeve head. This served two purposes. a) it helped ease the sleeve and b) it will give the sleeve more support at the top. Next time I will use a thinner fabric. The pattern called for loose wool or self fabric. I didn't have any wool scraps and self fabric would have been too heavy. I am now ready to hem the sleeves and body, but I was too tired to do any more tonight.