A Sneak Peek at My Frosting....

I'm still in the mixing phase of my new "frosting" project - you know how your arm can get sore when you're mixing up a batter that seems to take forever?

Well, my arm is sore.   So I thought I'd take a break and share a taste.  ;-)

I'm actually a bit excited about this piece of fluff, but it's one of those projects that keeps getting re-invented as I go along, and is definitely taking longer than the quick little piece of icing that I thought it was going to be.

Here's Step One.   Actually, it's more like step 9 or 14, but it's what I'm going to share at the moment....

A welt pocket.   

An angled welt pocket.

A free-hanging angled welt pocket (aka, not attached to any stabilizing seams)

A free-hanging angled welt pocket installed in a hunk of 3" long faux fur.

Yeah, I know....Right?

(what WAS she thinking???)

My preferred method of constructing a free-hanging welt pocket is Judy Barlup's, which I blogged about way back when, and I think I haven't constructed one like this since.   And I've certainly never installed one in 3" faux fur!  Truth is, her method is the most complex I've seen, but it does have a couple of major advantages:  the ends of the welts are mitered, so you don't have the bulk of the seams at the ends.  That's not an issue in this case (all that fur is going to hide a multitude of sins, after all!).   The other advantage is that the pocket bag is attached directly to the welt, so it's really designed not to need the stability of a waist or side seam.

I lightened this shot a bit, so that you can see the mitered seams on each end:

I marked the welt seam on the wrong side of the fabric, and pinned along the mark.....

Then searched for the pins on the fur side, separated the fur, and trimmed some away along the seam line...

It may SEEM like it's been a simple process to this point, but truth is that by now I've probably been futzing and fussing over all of this for at least 2 hours (maybe more....no, definitely more....)

My intention had been to make 2 pockets.

I'm already thinking that one will be enough.

Actually, I was having moments of thinking that maybe none would be enough, and that there's enough fur there that no one would even notice the bit that I've snipped away....

But I persevered....  I'd already made the welt, after all...

Welt pinned in place:

I'm going to spare you the gory details (including one bloody finger) of the rest of the process.   I muddled through the instructions, which even included bringing out my sample welt and studying that, and adding notes to my previous blog post where I got confused.

2...or 3.....or perhaps 4.....hours later, I had a finished pocket!:

All that work and you can't even see it!   But I guess that's a good thing, right?

It is there....:

And the project really kind of does need 2..... but I just can't face it right now, and I'm storing the thought that I can actually install another one later with just a teeny bit of unpicking a side seam if I really really really want a second pocket.  

Right?

Next post will be the reveal, but I have tax prep to do first (and if you have the same attitude about paperwork/taxes as I do, you might have chosen to do a struggly welt pocket too......)

What's on your plate right now?  Cake or frosting? :-)