New Look 6853

After a day and a half of constant hand sewing, it is finished!! I was going to take it slow, but Mitch is taking me out on the town tonight, and I wanted to wear my jacket. So here it is!!From the front - The fit is fine. There is a little bit of overlap at CF, which I don't need. Otherwise it is good.
Side - I am really wishing that I had just gone for the two piece sleeve. This one isn't as sleek as I'd like, but it was easy to match the plaids!
Back - The fit in the back is absolutely perfect. Can you tell there is a seam at CB? Mad skills...
Here is a close up of the trim, before it was sewn on.And, of course, what is a Chanel jacket without a chain? I got mine at Home Depot - Sh! Don't tell!

"Ease"iest sleeve ever!

After taking a little break making my Jalie tops, I was ready to get to work on my jacket again. Next up were the sleeves, and I was excited about using a technique I had read about several places, most recently when Erica B. made her Vogue 8601. Instead of easing the sleeve in using the traditional 2 rows of gathering stitches, you use a bias strip of Armo-Rite (scavenged from an old tie in my case) and stretch it to fit the armscye as you sew.
Here is the Armo-Rite sewn onto my sleeve cap.
And here is the sleeve! Perfectly eased with no puckers or tucks.
And how great is that plaid matching across the sleeve, hey? Next up - bagging the lining, then I will just have to attach the chain and trim and it will be done! I'm starting to see the end in sight. I might make that Nov 15th deadline after all!

Steam...

I think I'm running out of it. All this basting by hand and careful plaid matching is making me a little crazy, so I think I'm going to take a brief breather from my Chanel jacket and sew up something quick.

In the meantime, here is where the jacket is so far.

Well, I guess it's really a vest at this point. As you can see, the fit is awesome and the plaid matching went well.The trickiest part for some reason was the back. I expected to have trouble with those curvy eased princess seams, but the front went in like a dream. In fact, for the first side I didn't even line up the plaids before I sewed. They matched up all by themselves - sweet.This was the spot on the back that gave me the most trouble. I'm sure you can imagine why! Don't do this to yourself! When placing a vertical and horizontal intersection do not put it on spot where you have to ease an inward curve into an outward curve!! There was much ripping of seams to get this right, which is probably why I need a break now.

I am not completely happy with the side seams. They shifted just the tiniest bit while I was sewing them. I really wish I had a walking foot for this. I don't have the energy to rip them out right now, so I'm just going to let them hang out and see how I feel about them in a couple of days.

Prototype and progress

As some of you may be aware, Mitch is a stud and rides his bike to work. Since it is finally getting cold, he hauled out all of his cold weather gear, as he does every year. Somehow, there always seems to be an integral component that we just can't find. This year it was his fleece ear warmer. So I thought I'd give a go at copying it, rather than forking over 20 bucks to Academy (again).So, here it is! This is my first attempt, to which Mitch declares, "That looks fine." High praise from him. It is a piece of scrap fleece bound with FOE. The narrow part covers the forehead and it widens to cover the ears and back of the neck, without any bulkiness to get in the way of the helmet. Pretty cool, huh? Although I think this one is pretty OK, I think that it is a bit thin and it bunches up a bit at the back of his neck, so I'm going to give it another go, this time with two layers of fleece, and more curve at the back of the neck.

And, lest you think the jacket has fallen by the wayside, here is my progress so far! The lining is fully constructed. I think the fit is good. (Whew! Since I didn't muslin!) I am currently hand basting the underlining to the boucle, so that may take me a while. I am a really slow baster.

Matching Plaids (or stripes)

I've always been a little afraid of plaids and stripes. All that matching and one little screw up results in a garment that I won't want to wear. I'm so picky about stripe matching. I won't buy something RTW if the stripes or plaids don't match. Anyway, since I bought this big windowpane plaid for my Chanel jacket, I decided I'd better do some reading up. I want my plaids to be perfect! So, here is what I've learned.

From Sandra Betzina's Power Sewing, I read about a foolproof plaid matching system, but it involves laying out each pattern piece individually on a single layer, and I don't have anywhere in my house big enough where my kids can't reach, so that method was out, although if you do have such a space, it looks like an amazingly accurate method. Check it out.

Since I had to lay out my fabric folded (my dining room table is just wide enough for folded 60 wide fabric), I wanted to make sure that the dominant pattern (in my case the red stripe) lined up both horizontally and vertically.As you can see, that means that my selvages didn't line up, but my plaids did! Since this is a woven in design, the woven lines give you a grain line you can really count on. Since my boucle is very a "shifty" loose weave, I then went the extra mile and pinned together my folded fabric along the red lines, making sure that they aligned on the two layers. I used really long corsage pins. You might be able to see them in the photo above!

Now, on to placing the pattern pieces. I found this great old sewing text at my library called "Unit Method of Clothing Construction" by the Iowa Home Ec. Association. It has this awesome diagram for pattern matching!Easy right! Just match up the letters!!
And look! It really was! Even with the added complexity of the princess seam, it was really not hard. Of course, there are a few additional pointers to remember, but The Iowa Home Ec Assn said it better. Here is how they said to do it...

"Place pattern pieces on vertical lines first, placing CF, CB and Center of sleeve (marked a in the figure) on the same plaid or stripe repeat. Slide pattern pieces up or down to match corresponding notches for horizontal meeting (marked b). Be careful to match at the SEAM LINE not the cutting line. If sleeve cannot be matched at both front and back notches, matching front notch is preferable."

Happy Matching!!