June 20, 2010

stupid eyelets


Look at these sad eyelets.


The first one, on the far left, I pushed the awl from the front of the fabric to the back. For the second I pushed the awl from the back to the front. I punched a small hole through the fabric for the third. And the fourth finally looked decent, but it was only through two layers of fabric instead of four, like the others, and I'll be working with four on the final piece because of the seam allowances. On the chance that maybe it wasn't just lesser layers that caused the improvement, but that I actually got better over the course of just four eyelets, I sewed one more.


It was me that got better! This eyelet is stitched through four layers of coutil with heavy duty thread. The pattern shows 58 eyelets so I better get to work.

12 comments:

  1. i don't think I necessarily envy this task either but I am extremely impressed. hand sewing things like buttonholes and eyelets have my name written all over them though I don't practice them all that much.

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  2. I'm feeling with you. The 54 eyelets on my stays last year also were a pain in the butt ;)
    But I'm sure you'll do a great job, Jo *tschaka*

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  3. That's some awesome improvement across only four eyelets. I'll look forward to seeing the whole set. :)

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  4. Looks beautiful! But the hand-done eyelets I've seen weren't done with that lovely purl. They were just sort of whipped around. Quick and sturdy.

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  5. aha! Kudos.

    I bore the awl front to back and back to front, then add a drop of fray check. Sometimes after the fray check is tacky I use the awl again and flatten the fabric with my fingers after I remove the awl. Great job and it's amazing to see the progress after 4 eyelets... I want to see the 58th!

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  6. Wow - those last two are possibly the prettiest hand-sewn eyelets I've ever seen. Do you fancy doing mine? No? Oh well, it was worth a try!

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  7. Thanks for the positive words all, I need them to get through this task!

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  8. That is an impressive eyelet! After 50something of my own I still haven't managed one that looks as good as your fifth!

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  9. That looks really good. I did handmade eyelets on a dress and used chainmail rings to make it sturdier. But it doesn't look like you would need that =) Good luck and I hope you can have fun with it!

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  10. I did that kind of fancy stitch on the first corset with eyelets that I did, but on later corsets and stays I just did simple ones that just whip over the edge of the hole, so they look like a star. Most of the pictures of extant garments I saw just used the simple ones, and they were much faster, and looked perfectly fine in my opinion. I also over time used thicker thread with more strands to make it faster due to needing to do less stitches, because the doing of eyelets gets boring pretty quickly!
    your choice depends on if you like the look of these eyelets enough to devote the extra time :D

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  11. Good luck doing 58 of them! I don't actually mind hand sewing eyelets. I had to on a corset of mine where the grommet (which was 2 part) had snapped somehow, it was a brand new corset as well. I blame it being off the rack. Anyway, needed to fix the eyelet back in place so hand sewed it. And I've hand sewn eyelets on some wrist cuffs I made so I could lace them up. It was fun. But that still only totals 7 which is nowhere near 58... That would take days!

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