Linen Kombu #2

This is a boring little post about a linen kombu. 

facings for days

 (For those who don't know what that is, in the Orthodox tradition, clergy members and monastics traditionally wear a cassock and riasson in church, and most clergy members wear the cassock all the time.  The riasson is like an outer cassock with big sleeves.  It billows a lot, and so many clergy members reserve their riasson-wearing for church and wear a vest over their cassocks the rest of the time.  The vest is called a kombu or kontorasson).  

hem facing

When my husband was ordained a deacon five years ago, I made him a self-lined linen kombu.  I used a doctor's coat pattern on the advice of another clergy member and left off the collar and shortened the body.  I also made him a silk-lined boiled wool kombu in 2016 when he lost his original wool one made by my mom. 

sleeve facings

After our travels this summer (in which my husband was wont to put his ipad in the front pockets of the kombu), I realized that it was time to replace it.  The buttonholes were ragged and sagging, the pockets were sadder than sad, and the fabric was faded and looked worn.  

machine-worked buttonholes!!

I ordered some black linen from fabrics-store.com (in the 1C64, which is slightly denser and nicer than the IL019), but I forgot that I would need four yards to self-line the sucker, so only ordered two.  When it came time to cut it out, I quickly realized there was no way to fully line it, so I set about making facings.  I probably could have just finished with bias and been fine, but I wanted the look of facings.  I ended up with bias-look facings on the sleeve openings, but it looks fine.  I also took the time to measure the pattern on my husband's shoulders and adjust each side to hit at the shoulder seam on his cassock (one shoulder is slightly higher/shorter than the other). 

I also had to conquer my buttonholer on my machine, since I knew that the kind of strain my husband puts on buttonholes would be better handled by machine-worked holes over my hand-worked ones.  (To recap: I was terribly scarred by the buttonholer on my mom's Pfaff, and have never tried to learn the buttonholer on my machine).  It turns out to be pretty easy to use (thanks, Bernina!) and now I'm drunk with power. 😬  Bring all the buttonholes!  Ha!!

In any case, it was a relatively quick project that turned out well enough and is getting good use.  I was hoping to get a pic of him wearing it, but I think I'll never log this project if I do.  If you follow the link to the wool version, you'll get the general idea.

Over and out.