Reversible jacket finished

My pink reversible jacket is done!

I am especially pleased with how comfortable it is. It is soft and cozy and unrestricting. I decided in the end to sew on large snaps as fasteners. I had thought of using the hammer-on snaps, knowing they would show on the outside of the garment but when it occurred to me that I could sew them on inside the fronts, I realized they would not show on the outside and so make the reversibility even less obvious. I had some 11 mm snaps but went out and got the biggest sew-on snaps they had - the 15 mm variety.

Going back to where I left off, I did a flat fell of the entire underarm seam (as usual). This jacket has to look as good on the blue side as the pink side. The fabric is a little bulky, being double-sided, but it isn't as stiff as 10 ounce denim so it wasn't that difficult.

It's always fun to sew down into the tube of the sleeve and come out at the far end of the sleeve. I put this photo in for a friend in my writers group who sewed his own shirt recently and wondered how flat felling this seam worked.

I made a sort of "couture" hem on the back (and then the sleeves). I used a single layer of the pink fabric that I got from the selvages and folded it over the raw edge of the hem. This photo is at the back where the side seams meet and the front bands end. On the right, everything is unfolded and on the left, I have started to pin everything down for top stitching.

Here are the cuffs, before and during hemming. Another friend said I should make turned-up cuffs in the contrasting colour, even though I made a point of really limiting the amount of contrast elsewhere on the jacket. I thought she was right.

Here's the jacket, almost finished (I haven't sewed the snaps on yet) with the cuffs turned up. Now that I have been nominated the next president of the board at BCA, it will be nice to have another bright pink jacket to wear for certain occasions. Breast cancer has surely appropriated the colour pink and it will serve to promote our charity.

Tunic shirt done!

Whoosh. Well, it wasn't difficult.

I usually flat fell my seams to finish them but I didn't want to do that on the light weight silk, so I thought I would use a French seam finish. I did that on the shoulders but zigzagged around the armholes. Then, I was going to French seam the underarm/side seams when I realized that wouldn't work with having vents on the sides. Instead, I sewed a "normal" right-sides-together seam and then ironed the seam allowance under, thus also making the vent edge finished.

It was at this point that I decided to re-examine my sewing machine for why it was breaking threads. I have a follower who also works where I shop for groceries and we had a nice long talk this week, about threads breaking and people who fix sewing machines. She said something like, "of course, you have checked the throat plate for snags" and I said "of course". But when I was sitting there, this afternoon, staring at my machine, I realized that I had not looked at the throat plate (the plate with the lines on it for 5/8 seam allowances, where the needle goes through the hole into the bobbin area). So I took it out and looked at it and sure enough! There were tiny metal snags where needles have broken over the years. Well. I thought that the sewing machine guy might have said something to me, especially as when I took the machine in, I said "it is breaking the top thread". So I got a tiny piece of very fine emery paper for sanding metal and spent 10 minutes buffing the snags. Then I proceeded to sew rapidly, using straight and zigzag stitches and the thread didn't break once! I did not allow myself to feel elated yet. Then I made six buttonholes and the thread broke twice! Grr. I am going to sand the heck out of the throat plate again and make sure there is nothing snaggy on it and then start a new project and see what happens. I suppose I could also buy a new one.

Anyway, here it is, a tunic length shirt with 3/4 sleeves. It fits and I am happy with the way it turned out. I'll want to wear it once to be sure but I think I have found the pattern for my gold silk. Now, for the sand paper...

Green jean jacket continued

Steaming ahead (literally)! There's a powerful lot of ironing in this jacket -- all those flat felled seams and pockets and things.

I always haul a previously made jacket out of the closet so I can look at it, more than the instructions even. This is one I get a lot of wear out of, made of a pale lilac pinwale cord.

Here are all the pieces ready to be assembled, after I have ironed on the interfacing. I decided to go with the black interfacing, to be one less colour in the palette. The interfacing occasionally shows, like when the front facings flip out in a wind or something.

Here are the pieces as I've started to assemble them. I've made this jacket so many times that I can assemble it out of order (and practically from memory) so that I can make it fairly quickly, sewing a pile of pieces and then ironing them all at once.

These are the two seams on one half of the front and I'm ironing them over after I've clipped one of the seam allowances, so I can make the flat fell. Onwards!

White denim jacket

If I can put the sleeve in around the shoulder, before I sew up the underarm seam, I will. It makes the finishing flat fell so much easier. And flatter.

I flat fell the underarm seam as well. Here, I have trimmed off the seam allowance on the back part of that seam, in preparation for ironing it so I can finish it. First I iron the seam open. Then I iron it closed, with the untrimmed seam allowance overlapping the other. Then I turn it right side out and iron it all again with the clapper. Then I turn it back, wrong side out and iron the untrimmed seam allowance folded over the other trimmed seam allowance, and also use the clapper. That's four separate presses of the same seam.

I haven't shown this shot in a while. To sew down the flat fell, you have to have the garment turned right side out, even though you are sewing from the inside (or wrong side). You start at the bottom edge of the jacket and, up to the armpit, the sewing is easy. Then you have to keep sewing the folded-over seam allowance but now you are sewing inside a "tube" which is the arm itself. Once you get to the wrist (which is where I am in the photo), you are done but you are also down in a "well" of fabric that is the inside of the arm. I was quite excited the first time I ever did that!

I like it when a garment starts to look like what it is supposed to be. That usually isn't until after the sleeves go on, with a jacket. The jacket is hanging in front of the first one I made in this pattern. It is all wrinkly from being bunched around under the needle of the sewing machine - but the seams are good and flat! Next - cuffs, the rest of the hem, buttonholes and buttons.

Man's casual shirt

Vroom! Bird shirt done!

We have had some wet summer so far so maybe this bright shirt will perk things up. If nothing else, they will see him coming on the bike path.

I used my old tried and true pattern - McCall's 8409. It makes a roomy short sleeved casual shirt and he likes it.

This time, I modified the front bands. The pattern calls for the buttonhole (left) side to be a true band and the other side (the right or button side) was just folded over. I decided to make both sides true bands and I like the difference. It's sturdier and looks more professional.

As usual, I put the sleeve on first, before I did the underarm seam.

This allows the flat fell finish to be even easier around the shoulder.

Then I finished it up in a trice! What next, I wonder?

Almost finished the brown outfit

Still working on the brown skirt and jacket.

The skirt is hemmed and completed now. I sewed seam binding around the skirt and then pinned up a fairly narrow hem. I let the skirt hang for a while and then turned up the lining hem to be about an inch shorter than the skirt and sewed it by machine. I sewed the skirt hem by hand.

I'm really pleased with how nicely this fabric handled. It raveled a fair but but didn't go crazy when I was handling the raw edges and in fact, folded over easily and smoothly and didn't even bunch up like some fabrics. I got it from the sale table - the please-take-this-away table - but it has behaved itself like expensive fabric. I flat felled the armhole because the inside of the jacket only has a partial lining. I started folding over the sleeve seam allowance, having trimmed the jacket seam allowance.

I went around the armhole very methodically, folding in tiny increments and pinning down the fold in preparation for sewing by machine. Once I was done, it looked very nice. Now I have to sew the edges of the partial lining by hand and then all I have left is to decide on the buttons.

Continuing with the skirt and jacket

Everything takes twice as long (or longer) when you obsessively finish the inside as well as the outside of a garment.

With the flat fell, each seam has to be sewed three times. On my modified flat fell, I turn each seam allowance under and sew it down on each side of the seam. So, seam plus two fells equals three runs at each seam. I'm not complaining - I like to do it this way - but I don't blog very quickly because of it.

Here I have draped the lining pieces half sewed over the sewing machine and stacked up the other pieces to sew down the fells on the left. I am also using up left-over beige thread and so I have three different spools of thread standing around, depending on what I'm sewing. I can use up the pale beige on the lining but I need the colour I purchased (more of a brown) to do the topstitching that shows.

I am attaching the lining to the skirt yoke/facing, thus making two "skirts" that will be attached to each other around the very top.

With wrong sides together, all the raw bits will be hidden. Not that there are many raw bits, with all my seam finishing. But around the zipper it can get a little messy.

I have made two pockets and may attach them to the jacket. But I can never seem to get the pockets completely square to the warp and woof, unless I am using striped fabric or I obsessively pull threads along one side. I'll have to think about whether I do use these. I suppose I can always pull threads on some fabric I have left over.

Starting to sew the Jacket

This morning, I sewed all the main vertical seams on the fronts and back, trimmed the seams, ironed them and then topstitched them in a flat fell. Probably more ironing than sewing but still, a fair bit of both.

The light in this photo makes the green look unfortunate and not at all like the bright, cheerful colour it is, but that shows up later. You can see the back, two fronts and the bottoms of the two sleeves, plus tabs and pocket flaps. I can see (close up) that I have used slightly different shades of green for the main seam stitching but I did make an effort to use the matching green thread for the top stitching. Then I filled a bobbin with the blue and did the top stitching of the contrast pieces.

First however, I pressed the heck out of the seams on the contrast pieces. I pressed the seam open on the wrong side.

Then I made sure it was really flat on the right side. Then I pressed the edge together so that the blue was on one side and the green on the other. If I hadn't done all that initial pressing, I might have had bits of the fabric rolling into the seam ditch and it could have been a mess. This way, it's neater and frankly, easier even if it does seem to take extra long in the pressing department.

This is an extreme close-up of the edge of the collar. You can see that on the underside (the blue side), you can just see a bit of the green. However, on the up side (the green side), you can't see the blue. I won't be wearing my collar turned up like they did in the 80s (or was that the 70s?) so I made sure the blue wouldn't be seen at the edge of the collar when it was lying flat. I suppose it doesn't matter but I had to decide one way or the other and this is the way I went.

Here is a close-up of the topstitching. I used blue for the bobbin thread and green for the top. In this photo, you can also see the difference between the right and wrong sides of the fabric itself as shown on the sleeve to the right of the pocket flaps.