Roundabout

Mademoiselle's team of house models in Moscow for the second Chanel show in Russia, 1967.  I am the one on the right. YOU KNOW IT!

This is me hand tying the knots at the end of each machine permanent stitch.  Tiger's legs.  Her tail is unusually long. She likes to sit on my fabric as soon as I sit down.

This is what I am doing. A quilted lining.  I am quilting each piece of my skirt and jacket before I even sew everything together.  In this case my lining is the pink silk and the black tweed is my shell fabric.  Get it? Kind of? 

The permanent quilting is on the left. The right side is what I have left to do.  Each time I stitch over the neon orange basting with my machine for a permanent stitch it takes about 10 minutes. This is becuase I am not back stitching with my machine. I leave long tails and I knot each end by hand.

The neon hand basting is along the sides of the pink stripes.  I thought I would just follow the pattern.  The basting is only temporary.  I use black thread on the tweed side and pink thread on the silk lining side so my final permanent stitching will not be noticed.

Sewing for 30 minutes was the best part of today.  The feeling of the silk and tweed coming together as one is quite awesome.  See my hand basting with the neon thread above. I sew with my sewing machine over the orange basting.  Once I am done quilting the silk to the tweed I will remove the neon thread.  That, my dear, is what you call couture sewing or CRAZY TOWN. 

This is just one piece of my jacket. I have a boat load more to go.  I will be done with this suit when we can live on Mars.

Couture Sewing Techniques, Claire B. Shaeffer

Chanel Collections and Creations, Daniele Bott

The 2 things I would need if I had to wander the desert for 40 years.