Thanks everyone for the encouraging and helpful suggestions about my cutting mistake. Alas it’s too late for that dress, which went in the bin shortly after I discovered my mistake, but it’s all good advice to remember for next time.

So I finally cut the Liberty fabric. Although to be perfectly accurate, what actually happened was that I laid out the pattern pieces on the Liberty fabric and then suddenly found all sorts of things that Had To Be Done around the house before I could go and start cutting out. After the horrible mistake I made with the test run fabric I was more than a little nervous about cutting into the good stuff.

But it is done now, and the picture above is the little pile of scraps I have left. Is it possible that for once I bought the correct amount of fabric, you ask? Well no. There’s an uncut metre and a half left over too, but I didn’t photograph that. At least if I go wrong I’ll be able to recut a piece or two this time.

The little pile of scraps will go in the bin once the project is finished, unless there any pieces large enough to be of use to my mother, who quilts. But I find it quite useful to keep the bits around for a while to test things out on. This particular project calls for buttonholes, never my favourite thing to sew, so I think the scrap pile is going to see quite a bit of use.

One of the buttonholes is a little bit unusual – at least I’ve not noticed this particular finish before. The project is a copy of a wrap dress I own, and the buttonholes are for the ties to pass through rather than actual buttons. The buttonhole at the waistline is placed in an area of the garment that’s just a single layer of fashion fabric. The buttonhole therefore requires quite a bit of reinforcing. On the original dress a small rectangle of fashion fabric has been top stitched to the back of the buttonhole area with its edges neatly tucked under. It’s very nicely done. Here’s the view from the inside of the dress.

You can’t see from this picture but it looks as the short edges of the patch were folded under first and pressed, then the long edges. I’m not sure if it’s been interfaced or not. I shall have to make a couple of samples out of my scraps and see what works best. Wish me luck.