Well, the lining is in now. And all the panels thereof are the same length!! lol Whew! I left it to hang on the dummy last night. Later today, I will sneak in there and do the hem. ;) The pattern said to do the neck, front openings, and 90% of the hem all in one pass. I was afraid that was fraught with danger. I was terribly afraid it wouldn't hang right and would tick me all the way off. lol So I did the neck. Then I did each front opening separately. I left the hem entirely open. I will hem it like a lined jacket. That made a lot more sense to me, and will be more sturdy I think. This way too, I can reach up in there and put a few French tacks at the seams so everything stays nice forever. :)
I did take a bunch of pictures as I went along last night on that opening. In the same album as before
I start out just like any bound buttonhole. I mark the wrong side with chalk and mark the guidelines. Then baste the guidelines. Then pin on the patch piece. Stitch, cut, press, stuff through to the wrong side. Now, here's the sneaky bit. I cut a small piece of WT for each short end, and put that over the top of the SA. Then when I want to lay down the short end of the patch piece where it tucks through to the wrong side, I have the tape there to hold it in place. Nice clean press.
On the long side, I wanted the fold of the patch, to form the lip of the opening, as close to the middle of the opening as possible. Easiest way to do that is to press the SA towards the opening and then fold the lip over the SA right? Was this crepe going to behave and lay there for that? Nope. So I folded the SA away from the opening, and put a strip of WT on the SA. Then when I fingerpressed the SA back towards the opening, over the WS of the patch, it stayed there. Another strip of WT over the SA and the ends of the patch. Then when I folded the cut edge of the patch back, I could stick it down with the WT. That gave me a just about perfect fold over the SA, with the folded edge smack in the middle of the opening. :) Repeat for the other side. Then I baste the opening closed so it behaves for topstitching and viola!
The pictures are pretty good of what I did. But it's red on red. When I get a minute, if anyone is interested, I will do a sample in all different colors and post the pics. That way you can see a little better what I did. It's so dead simple, I can't believe I didn't think of it on the FIRST one. LOL
Sharon