Friends, the toggle coat is in the can! Wait -- that sounds wrong. It's done.
Just to recap, here's the pattern, which I bought on Etsy from a seller in Barcelona:
And here's my coat, which I should only get to wear in Barcelona.
This project gave me a few gray hairs, not to be confused with all the pet hair I had to remove with the sticky roller and, in the case of a few stragglers, by hand. As I've said before, it's not so much that this coat is difficult per se as much as there's so much to do. I'll probably write more about the construction tomorrow but let me say now you haven't lived till you've topstitched on a toggle. (Not for the easily stressed.)
Readers, I must ask you. Let's say I finish a project and I know there's something not quite perfect about it. Would you prefer I --
a) point it out to you up front;
b) let you find it yourselves (in which case you'll probably find something I didn't even notice and would rather not know about); or
c) pretend it's flawless; hero-worship is an important coping mechanism in troubled times.
I ask you because I did make an error in judgment with regard to the hem -- though one that's entirely fixable. Here's the deal: I turned up the hem, about 2 1/2" wide, and stitched it by hand, having bound the seam first. The pattern then calls for topstitching roughly 1" from the bottom -- no problem. But I'm seeing the wider hem above the topstitching from the outside. I can either a) cut the hand stitches from the top of the hem, trim the hem facing down a bit and re-bind; or b) remove the hand stitches and re-stitch as-is, making sure the stitches go only through the underlining and not the out fabric so they won't be visible.
You can see what I'm talking about here, I think. Or not.
More toggle coat-related pre-dawn stream of consciousness:
The thing about toggle coats is that they close more loosely than zippered or buttoned coats and they shift a bit as one moves. There are very clear horizontals that ideally should match (like the bottom edges of the yoke or the left and right toggles themselves) or the coat looks askew.
The toggles are as distant from each other as they can be; the coat can't close any tighter. Should I a) live with it, nobody will notice; or b) put a button or two on the inside flap to secure the coat without the toggles? Thoughts?
Here's my toggle fashion spread, nothing fancy:
Thank you for encouraging me to buy the real horn toggles -- I love them! And of course, your constructive comments were a great help thoughout, as always.
Happy
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