Behind the Seams | Hook and Eye Cardigan

Finished product of the hooks, before the top stitch.

How to attach the hooks (direction). Then layer with middle strip, then lining layer.

Sew by feeling the hooks.  Lots of feeling and checking.

The eyes... marked against the hooks... discrepancies!

Adding the topstitch, stitched on the "testicles" of the metal parts.

Finished.

Used 2XL ac fitted tee pattern. Changed hem to have curve. Added princess seams as style lines by drawing them on existing 2XL made previously. Very helpful. I got it wrong on paper but drawing it on myself on body helped a lot. I got it wrong = the princess seams look crap and it matters which way it bends or meanders around the bust & high bust points. 

Alabama Chanin journal has example of turning the fitted tee pattern into a cardigan - spitting it down the middle front. 

Paint job was heat set with iron. Then after i finished garment I put it in the oven for 15-20 minutes and the oven went from 0-120 degrees Celsius during that interval. I think the test is like when you can smell the plastic fumes a bit. Not good but I think the paint molecules are well and truly bonding. Seems to really set my paint when I do this, even parts that have been faintly sprayed by accident. 

Setting the hook and eyes. Do one side first, proportioned by a ruler. 

Do the other side by lining up the opposite to the finished first side. 

There was too much "shortening" of the length of the fabric after I top stitched the first side (at centre front). Not good. Must keep the lengths non-shrunk. 

When I calibrated the second (opposite) side to the first .... yikes you can get this really wrong too. I drew in the lines three times in three different colours and got three different results in parts of the centre front opening. Make sure the two sides are *really* in line with each other and fabric is flat. 

The hooks.....are fantastically placed. See how there's no gaping hole on the hook opening due to the way the fabric edge removes the gap. Perfect when the garment  potentially bags out. The eye easily finds its way in and out of the hook with a little pressure, like a clip. But it's not going to fall open by itself. Very happy with this placement. 

The top stitch for hooks & eyes directly correspond to the hooks & eyes. I used single thread stitch to further anchor their position- but double did each one.  Just a choice I made being inexperienced and saw that it worked out well. Double over stitch also makes the single thread behave like it's been knotted there. They are quite far apart...not the typical 1/8-1/4" spacing employed by Alabama Chanin. They are 1/2" apart per hook or eye. Hook and eye are size 2, whatever that means. There's around 45 sets being used. 

The neckline is boat neckline hand drawn like the rest of the modifications to the original pattern. Shoulder is 2.5 inches wide. 

The paint is majority pure satin silver (cheap) + pearl white (decent quality). Just watered it just enough to get through the airbrush - but the thicker the better for longevity. Paint did look a bit spotty as it landed but it did dry on the fabric quite evenly.  Didn't leave any spotty residue. 

Saw that if you spray paint directly from above , then you don't get fuzzy edges where the stencil is not 100% flat on the fabric. Directly from above (not angled 45 degrees as tutorial said) works better for crisper painting. 

With the use of a third layer (let's call this the innermost), I traced it from the already sewn together front and back. Therefore they have less seams. But to make them curl the in the same manner with each other at the hems, I added small stitches at the seams at the hems where there are princess lines.