Monday, February 20, 2012

Happy Louis Riel Day!

I was planning on researching and writing up a nice post about Louis Riel and what he meant to the Metis and Manitoba in general. But then Graca at Sew Essentially Sew beat me to it and did a better job than I probably would've, so instead I'm going to direct you there.

Photo via Wikipedia

To celebrate, I was going to hoof it down to the Legislature Building to go oogle the statue of Louis Riel, and then go see what the Festival du Voyageur had to offer for the day. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling all that well today.

Instead, I'm going to work on my wool coat, which is sort of appropriate? Maybe? Not only did I manage to force myself to finish basting all the guts of the coat for warmth/structure last night, but I even managed to sew a few small pieces together!

Don't mind the pins on the pocket. I forgot to make the lining piece narrower than the pocket, and the pins are to hold back the inner fabric to keep it from showing when I attach it to the coat.

I decided to do topstitching in black. Sadly, my topstitches are sort of crap, because cripes is 4 layers of wool + interfacing hard to sew through! But the shoddy stitches don't really bother me that much, and I imagine it'll get better as I go. Now that I'm actually sewing this thing together, I actually feel inspired to work on it. Finally!

That is, if I can avoid getting distracted by my latest craft project...

4 comments:

  1. Yay, stitching! Feels good, doesn't it?

    I think over here in Alberta the holiday's just Family Day, which is fairly lame---I'd way rather have Louis Riel day. My husband isn't directly related to Riel (although I'm sure there's some connection) but he is a direct descendant of Cuthbert Grant, who was a big deal in the Red River Rebellion and even had a town named after him at some point, I believe. Off to read Graca's post now! :)

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    1. Ooo, very cool! We have a street named after him, apparently. A lot of Grant's shenanigans seemed to have occurred in Manitoba, so I approve. :D

      I need to read up more on the Red River Rebellion. Maybe for my next sewing break!

      The stitching part feels awesome! I've got a good portion of the shell put together, and am just starting the sleeves! It's amazing how quickly these parts are going together. Still have fiddly stuff coming up soon, but I'm just pleased to have something resembling a coat after all this time!

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    2. Yes, very cool! There was a lot of misunderstanding around the River Rebellion and the contributions of the Metis people, Horace (Honore) Jackson was another fascinating person. And Tanit-isis, now you have me wanting to research Cuthbert Grant in my sewing breaks!

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  2. That coat looks like a awesomeness in waiting-love the colour. Will be watching this space for further details.

    PS OpenID doesn't work for non-blogger users. Could you install disqus or something similar so the rest of us can comment without getting *smashysmashykillykilly* please?
    http://theperfectnose.wordpress.com

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