continental drift

The beautiful thing about living in a Queen Anne is that the foyer has a grand staircase, and if you clear off the foyer floor, lay out the work, and climb to the second landing, you can stick a camera over the banister and get a pretty nice full on shot. The image is a little skewed because of the angle, but the top of the duvet really does have a slight dimple. I laid out the duvet, ripped out the stitches, recut the back and the top to fit the comforter, and that's how it turned out. A slight dimple in the side. The top right and bottom right look flared - that's because I put holes at the 'bottom' to aid in fitting the comforter into the cover, and I put facing along the seams.

Just facing, the duvet itself isn't lined. Maybe at some point, I will line it. Or remake it. Or whatever. In any case, a full lining seemed ridiculous where a two inch facing would do well. The end nearest my hand is sewn into the seam for the side, and tucked under. The opposite end of the hole I left the tails free of one another so that they can be tucked to cover the comforter. They should have been wider than two inches to effectively accomplish this, but that was the left over bit. It is a pretty sizable hand hole; I wanted to be sure I could get my arm in with out pulling the seams apart.  

I dealt with the large open end by putting in a button placket. They aren't the nicest looking button holes in the world, but considering they won't be seen, I'm not concerned about appearances. Something to watch out for on the sewing machine in the future though. I tried to center the placket as best as I could with out actually measuring, the button holes were marked out at six inches apart. I'm not looking at it right now, I think I sewed in seven button holes. I won't be adding buttons for a while as my button stash has been packed... like everything else. I'm still not satisfied with how the piece looks over all. It could have been the stripe orientation on the bed, or the giant, void, yellow space. Also unsatisfying is that somehow the three grouped stripes drifted on one end. I have no other word for it, they square evenly on one side and on the other side, the seam comes together at the piecing on an angle. It doesn't happen anywhere else, and it's just along the edge that it is obvious. As duvet covers go, it is serviceable, and the comforter does fit, as long as the stitching of the comforter is parallel with the long stripe pieces. Design flaw that comes with not taking one's time. I also noticed that the Target brand sheet billed as "ultra soft" is only ultra soft on one side. The fabric has retained some of the perfume from the laundry detergent it was washed in yesterday, now every once in a while I get a whiff of fresh scent.

The initial purpose for this project was to cover a comforter to put on a bed for when the house is shown. The comforter, meant for a full size bed, only covers the top of the California King bed, not, obviously the sides. The sheets on the bed are therefore visible, also obviously the wrong size because we kept out the regular king sheets instead of packing them. Also visible is the area under the bed, where most of my things are currently stored. Unacceptable, says the Realtor. So there's a blue and white damask bedspread - also not intended for a bed of this, uhm, stature - that is magically supposed to help take care of the visibility problems. Trouble is, there are about four other different  blue and white color combinations already going on in this room. And they kind of make my head hurt.