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.

Jacket's done and some other stuff

First of all, let me say thank you for your kind comments. And all of them positive, as I had asked for! That whole energy thing is a force to be reckoned with.

Now, back to the jacket. This is the cuff. I have sewed it to the wrong side of the sleeve, sewed the ends together and turned them and now I have pinned the folded and trimmed edge to the outside. If you make the photo large and look closely, you can see the line of stitching that attaches the cuff. The folded edge will just cover that line and the cuff itself will be sewed to the sleeve with topstitching.

Here I am, sewing the cuff to the sleeve with a line of topstitching.

Once I had finished ALL the topstitching (each line has a duplicate, parallel line so there are two rows everywhere), it was time to attach the snaps. I just use the kit snaps and they come with two tools. You cut a tiny hole in the fabric with this one tool, by hammering it through the fabric and then you put the snap pieces in place and hammer them together using the other tool to crimp the pieces of metal together.

It works pretty well until the hammer slips off the tiny tool and smashes you in the thumb. Not a crisis (although it does really hurt) but when you have chemo, the chemicals break down your blood cells too and you can bleed pretty badly, so I iced this as soon as I had smashed it.

Once I got back upstairs, I realized I could hold the tiny tool with a pair of pliers and couldn't believe I had not thought of it before. It was a slap myself in the head, duh kind of moment.

And here it is! I am all decked out with Christmas colour accessories because Christmas is tomorrow. I bought some large scarves for my now bald head but I find I am most comfortable in this little knit cap I got from the MEC for bike camping, or all the old scarves I bought for my beloved dog when she was alive. Wearing her scarves is a sort of homage to her too.

And then I had some time to make a couple of gift bags that can also be used as shoe bags. When you live in snow country, you wear boots everywhere but bring your shoes when you visit peoples' homes and shoe bags are always welcome.

I had two pieces of some upholstery fabric that were just big enough for women's shoe bags. The only thing I miscalculated was the size of the pocket for the draw string. If in doubt, leave more room.

I was using this fairly fine, nylon cord I had so I thought I didn't need much room. And it does move through the sleeve well enough.

But the fabric is so thick that it doesn't bunch up much and it would have been better to have a slightly larger casing. However, I am not willing to re-do it now. Anyway, if it's just for shoes, it doesn't need to be tight at the top.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas for tomorrow.