Pirate Coat and Collar

Coat is stitched.

First, here is a photo of the finished pirate coat.  My second thread choice was Just Right, making ripping out a pleasure, not a pain.  I do love it when things come together!  The next step is stitching the collar and collar trim.

Collar is stitched.

As usual, I considered the collar's shape when picking a stitch.  Doesn't that curve of the right collar look like bargello?  I went with simple straight satin stitches that make up a sort of vertical Bargello Wave pattern to make the right side collar stand out against the Dotted Swiss shirt and the Long Upright Cross Stitch coat.  I can use more or fewer plies to make the collar heavy enough to look good with (not dominated by) the shirt and coat.  I used the same silk thread on the collar as on the coat.

Unstitched Pirate Cat Canvas

Compare this photo of the unstitched Pirate Cat to the stitched coat photo above.  See how I stretched out the long silk stitches to cover more of the gold trim area?  There's a reason for that--I plan to use detached buttonhole for the trim.  Because of the way detached buttonhole is done, I don't want as much gold paint showing.

The final step before starting detached buttonhole is to stitch the collar on the left side.  For the left side collar, I used tent stitches and also covered all but one row of gold stitches.   Now all that is left is the collar trim.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow