The Pelisse that Time Forgot

Listen well, o my children, to this cautionary tale...

A good five years ago, my friend's wife gave me a pair of green cotton velvet curtains that they'd bought when they first opened the guest house they run. Beautiful bottle green, slightly faded by the sun in patches, an enormous quantity of velvet.

I decided to make myself a pelisse for autumn and winter wear, something good and heavy, and decided on the blue silk pelisse in Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion". I re-dyed it to cover the sun fading, cut it out, tacked it together... and then Real Life got in the way and I put it in a cupboard and forgot all about it.

Fast forward five years (and this velvet has got to be the best part of 30 years old by now.....) and whilst turning out the cupboards ready for our son to move in to his own bedroom, I find the pelisse.
It's been downhill ever since....

I've lined it with a very heavy bridal satin in a rather tasteful sage green. The problem is, the velvet is unravelling rapidly due to old age and decrepitude (somewhat like me!) so as fast as I'm hemming up the frayed patches, sage green lining pops into view.
*SFX as of tearing hair*

Solution is to use wide black velvet ribbon as an edging band to cover the uneven edges, so far so good, right?
Wrong! The fastening of the original is a covered button band inside the bodice. With the black velvet edging, the only way it "works", visually, is edge-to-edge fastening, and the only way I can think of to do that is with hooks and eyes.

And that's before we start thinking about how I'm going to cover the fraying at the seams wherever the weight of the velvet has pulled it apart.
(Piping cord is your FRIEND.....)

Note to self: next time anyone offers you any reclaimed velvet, look that gift horse in the mouth, girl!

But it WILL be finished, and it WILL look good. That's not a threat ;-) it does look rather splendid at the moment, it's just a matter of catching those loose ends - literally and metaphorically.