Well... I just couldn't walk away without knowing if it was something I did wrong or what so I wrote to my friend Nancy in a private message. I am delighted, well as delighted as one can be when finding out why all that time and effort was down the tubes, but delighted none the less to have found out what went wrong!
It was not the stitch length but instead it appears my coat had DRY ROT! You can not see it or smell it but when you stitch it the coat becomes powdery and falls away from the seams! AH HA moment! So in knowing this now I feel I might try again with a different coat as that might have also been the reason why I was sneezing so much! Powdery dusty leather microbes were most definitely floating into my nose...eeewwww! But hay, I might still have a shot at making a fur bear yet!
So what I would like to suggest to you all is this... before you spend all that time on cutting out the entire bear and lining it, make a test swatch from a few different areas on your coat and do a lining and seam! Just small pieces so you can be sure your coat does not have DRY ROT! THEN go ahead if the coast is clear and your seams stay together!
Thankfully I have not given away my other coats yet! And thankfully and regretfully I now have something plausible to tell the lady who gave me the coat as to what happened. I am learning a lot in this process so am grateful for my trials in that sense but it would be nice to get a bear completed from a coat down the line!
I will try again fresh with a new coat!
Thank you Nancy for sharing this wonderful knowledge with me and my readers!
I'm so glad that you know what happened. Thank you for sharing this with us--I would have never known otherwise how to check for it. I have some real fur sitting in a drawer. Maybe there's hope for it yet!
ReplyDeleteHeaps of Hugs,
Cheryl
Aaah, interesting. I will take your advice if I ever decide to tackle the pile of fur I have in the closet. It will save a lot of wasted time. Thanks Michele.
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