Saturday, October 31, 2009

The trials of trim

What's a Chanel jacket without trim? The classic (hackneyed?) trim for red is either gold or black. Or both. Last week I was THIS close to getting iron-on gold trim. At the last second, fearing it would look cheap on a casual day topper (trying too hard at best and street wear at worst), I paused.

In the spirit of the fall tweed version, I gave myself permission to use brown (brown being the new black in recent years) and gold colours to trim my orangeish red mohair. I have just the ticket in my stash: a brown/black/yellow/taupe houndstooth, waiting its own turn to be turned into a snazzy suit. Birgitte (bubblegum4breakfast) showed us how to use bias-cut houndstooth strips to make a very cute fringe. To tie these completely different colours to the FF, I looped two mohair weft threads together & stitched them on top. (the warp of this fabric is pure plain wool, and only the weft thread has mohair loops in it).

And, and,,and?? I find the whole effect altogether too fuzzy. So back to the drawing board. Black and gold.

So, today's options are:

gold iron-on trim
.
.
.
.
.


silvery iron-on trim
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

narrow black lace (it's white because the black sold out - and if the store doesn't re-stock, I can dye it, since it's rayon).

Hmmmmm.

Any suggestions?

Any ideas?

4 comments:

  1. I like the check fringe. The colors look fun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I completly agree with Cindy I think the hounstooth check fringe looks great.

    Marie-Noëlle

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with the others - the houndstooth check fringe is great!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can I be completely frank? Ditch the iron-on trims. They don't add a thing and in fact detract.
    If you aren't convinced on the houndstooth that you've already made, then keep looking, OR experiment with a different version. How about cutting a 3/4" wide strip of the houndstooth and fraying it just a bit? Not the whole thing so that it's all fuzz?
    When I made my sisters jacket last year it took several attempts before we worked out exactly what would work, and then it was 2 layers of trim stitched together with beads that nestled into one of the layers.
    If I can't find your email send me an email at mlweaving at yahoo dot com. I have another suggestion too that I want to take off board.
    Marji

    ReplyDelete