How to make a thrift store Regency Spencer: Part 3

Welcome to Dr. Frankenstein's Laboratory.
This has been the biggest piecing together of scrap material since the patchwork skirts of the 40s.

Sewing can be frustrating sometimes. Sometimes I'm not really appreciative of the lessons I've learned while sewing. Today's lesson was that velvet apparently has a top and a bottom. If you turn a piece around – because you need to use a scrap as efficiently as possible – it will look like the photo below where both middle pieces of the waistband are a helluva lot darker than the rest of the coat. I realized this AFTER I had sewed it down, of course. I undid the whole thing and then sewed it wrong AGAIN.  Six hours later, I've posted here what I've learned.

1) After pinning down the band (making sure to check that the velvet or grain of fabric is running the same way thoughout), sew the top of the waistband with right sides together.

2) Flip the waistband down and then check how much you want to hem the piece. I wanted my waistband to be 1 inch wide (mostly out of necessity since the pockets the coat previously had inhibited the amount of fabric I could get).

3) Trim the excess material underneath the waistband.

4) Pin the waistband to the width you want.

5) Go ahead and cut off the miles of lining now, leaving about an inch to hem nicely inside the spencer!  :-)     (Thank God)

6) Check out the pinning job.  I will need to mess with the evenness of the width, but I'm too tired right now.

Da' Front.

Der bach.  ZZzzzZZZzzzzz.

My entire dining room now has overdosed on velvet pills which cover every usable and non-usable surface:

In fact, the pills also now cover ME. Tonight, I will dream of ants crawling all over me.

Dr. Frankenstein – OUT –.