I’ve spent the evening finishing the top for Lesley. I made facings for the collar, front and back seams, and armholes using the red stretch knit fabric from the side panels, plus a layer of fusible interfacing. After topstitching the facings down and finishing the seams with bias tape, I had two halves of a top: time to join them. I put a row of eyelets down each side, front and back, then laced the halves together with elastic cord. The last time I made this top, I found that the lacing tended to shift around: the seam would pull close together around the middle, and spread apart top and bottom. I decided to help avoid that this time by running both cords through a bead at their intersection, hoping that the extra friction would keep the tension from shifting around. It’s all done now, save tying off the ends of the cords. It’s a simple design, but it was fun to put a lot of effort into the finish, and I am proud of the result.

A package from Sparkfun arrived today, containing a pair of three-axis accelerometers, a pair of mini Arduino boards, and a handful of RGB LEDs. These will become an LED glow-poi system for Ava; I’ll mount the electronics inside two pairs of acrylic hemispheres and attach a ball chain. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to join the hemispheres to each other, but it’ll work out somehow.