If You Bleed on It, It Must Be Worth Working On

After this weekend, my fingertips hurt.  The index finger of my left hand has a bandaid on it now (which makes typing uber-weird) that covers up a neat little chunk I took out of my finger with a straight pin.  My middle finger on the left hand has a little red dot from where I poked myself with a needle.  The thumb and index finger of my right hand have similar little red dots, and I also have a neat little "stitch ripped" line where I tried to rip the stitches from my own flesh (oops).  The basement trash can is full of little blood-stained tissues.  My work space kind of looks like Seymour Krelborn's work space at Mushnik's Flower Shop (you know, before he started feeding Audrey II people).

This blog entry is taking an interesting turn...  Let's move on.

Since I started sewing, I've had a saying.  I don't even know where the saying started in my project-line, but over the years, I keep it in the forefront of my mind every time I work on something: if you bleed on it, it must be worth working on.  For me, this basically means that if you went through this much - this much pain and this much hurt - to get here and you're still going, then it must be worth fighting for.  Very rarely does bleeding actually help a project.  Usually you have a brief moment of panic and insert an outcry/curse (I learned how to curse when I learned how to sew - that's another blog entry for another time).  Then you assess the wound, check for bleeding and then, finally, stop the bleeding before it gets on important things like fabric.  (Unless, of course, you're working on a weathered Lara Croft costume.  In that case, wipe that wound on whatever item is closest to you and call it "accurate".)

This weekend, I spent most of my time working on the Jyn Erso vest.  This is the brown vest that I originally purchased off of eBay that I was planing on wearing "as is" and just saying "forget accuracy".  This is the vest we'll be speaking off:


So Thursday night, I happened to be starting at the vest and I thought, "Wait.  No.  I can make this cooler.  Way cooler."  (This is how all good and bad ideas start, it seems, so it's difficult to differentiate between the two upfront.)

So I sat down with my stitch ripper, turned on my Rogue One soundtrack, and went to town ripping out those stitches.  It didn't stop there.  It got way uglier and more involved than a few ripped stitches.

Below is a rundown of how this vest saga has turned out so far:

Thursday

• I ripped out stitches that held in a front zipper.  I pulled the zipper and additional zipper panels off.
• I ripped the stitches out of the collar because I knew I'd eventually have to shorten in both height and length.
• I cut off a chunk of the vest in order to shorten it, with the intent of adding an elastic waistline later.
• Since the vest was a little snug, I went ahead and ripped out the side seam stitches with the intent of stitching those back up with a smaller seam allowance.
• Since I was already staring at the inside of the vest anyway, I decided it was a little too "puffy" for Jyn.  I snipped holes into the interfacing that held the fluff batting, and I pulled out about half of it in each and every section of the vest.  I hand-stitched these holes back up because it made them lay a little flatter and neater.

  

  Vest guts in the basement

• Then, since everything was already torn apart and it made it easier for me to do any sort of decorative stitching, I decided to go ahead and start making the decorative lines that are on the front of Jyn's vest.
• I went to bed quite happy with where this was all going.
• We ended with something like this at midnight:
  

Friday

• Trip to JoAnn's to pick up some fabric for pockets, details, additional stuff, lining, etc.  
• I added the decorative stitching to the other side of the vest.
• I shortened the collar in all ways it needed to be shortened and stitched it down. 

Saturday

• Trip to JoAnn's (again) to pick up coordinating thread that I forgot to pick up on Friday.  Also picked up some stiff felt pieces to use as "webbing" because I can't find any dark brown webbing.  And this is "good enough".
• Decided the back of the vest would look "super awesome" if I actually quilted it like Jyn's in the movie.  So I ripped more stitches, pulled out more stuffing, did some research on tie quilting, and then measured and marked and quilted.  By hand.  Ouch.

  

  Learning new things - like floss tied quilting

• Then, because the torture wasn't quite exquisite enough, I decided that I could totally change the lining of the jacket from tan to the screen-accurate red.  So I got down on the floor, put a piece of tissue paper over my vest, drew out a rough pattern with seam allowances, and then cut out my two side lining pieces.  
• I hand-stitched one of the side lining pieces, and I pinned the other one in place.
• I cut up some of the stiff felt to use as the two webbing pieces on the vest front and tested placement.
• I decided to hand-stitch the yellow stitch lines that go from the shoulder to the waist band of the vest.  I completed one of four which allowed me to place the faux-webbing.
• I stitched down the faux-webbing.

Sunday

• Turned on my sewing machine to realize I'd blown the light bulb.  Cue the third trip to JoAnn's in just as many days.  Light bulb found.  Got caught in store by thunderstorm.  Looked around.  Remembered I needed elastic.  So remembered to get that.
• Decided I could do a back lining piece, too (I'm so glad I'm making this "easy" on myself).  Did the same pattern mock-up with the tissue paper, cut my fabric piece, pinned it in.
• I finished hand-stitching in all three lining pieces while watching movies with the Nerd Husband.   
• I finished hand-stitching in the last three yellow stitch lines from shoulder to waist band.
• To cut down on the bulk of the garment (because it was currently outer layer, batting, interfacing, original lining, red lining), I decided to cut out as many portions of the original tan lining as I could get to.  Some areas were hard to reach and other areas were kept to help stabilize the whole thing.
• I tried to play with a pocket pattern and drafted out two patterns that didn't work out for me.  I'm trying to figure out how to add the gusset and make it look decent.  It was late when I started, though, so I gave up and went to bed.  

After all of that, we're looking at a project that currently looks like this:

Now I'm actually sitting in the basement trying to figure out what my "next steps" are.  I received a PM from a poster on the RPF boards today in response to my inquiry about the pockets, and they were very kind to provide me with their pattern and instructions.  However, I don't have those print-outs sitting in front of me right now, and my brain is really kind of tired.  I'm not sure that's something I want to try and mess with this late at night.  Really, I wanted to try to type all of this out so I had it out there - so I could see some of my own progress and just how far along this thing has come.   Yeah, I've bled on it.  Yeah, I've taken some chunks out of my fingers, flung a few curses, and drank my weight in Diet Mt. Dew into the wee hours of the morning.  But it's been worth it.   It'll all be worth it.