The Blue Jacket and Skirt

Forging ahead with the blue fabric, I have finished the incredibly easy four panel skirt.

It will go with everything, including of course, the green jacket.

Except for the bands (cuffs and bottom) here are the contrast pieces. I tried doing the topstitching in blue on both top and bobbin threads to see how it would look. I used the tabs as test pieces because they are small and you never really see the undersides of them. I didn't like the way it looked (as I suspected) and so I did the rest of the contrast topstitching with blue on the top and white on the bobbin.

I also did the buttonholes on the flaps and tabs before sewing them to the jacket. I often do this because it's just easier to put them under the buttonholer but couldn't do it with the green jacket because I had not got the buttons yet. In this photo, you can also see the way the topstitching looks on both sides.

I am including this photo of the inside of the back yoke because of how I like to press things really flat. Even though the seam allowances get pressed up, I first press them open and then press them up. One more step but I think it makes the finish worthwhile. I tried taking a photo of the right side with one half only pressed up and the other double pressed but you couldn't see the difference in the photo. Of course, I can tell the difference in real life! Truly. :)

Here is the blue jacket on Rose, about half done, with one pocket flap artfully pinned up to show the contrast.

Up to the cuffs

I now know to turn off the strong incandescent light over my ironing board, before I take a photo. Then the flash on the camera goes off and I get the right colour reproduction. So now my pix are really GREEN.

Here, I have started to pin down the flat fell for the shoulder seam finish. I really can't iron down the flat fell around the shoulder, so I pin it, sew it and then give it a final press. Of course, I did first press the seam allowance as flat as I could toward the body of the jacket.

I usually do a modified flat fell on the underarm seam but since I made the tiny baby clothes recently and flat felled everything there in miniature, I thought I would do a proper, trim-only-one-side flat fell and it worked well. I also did it that way to save thread, because I would only have to sew down the one side, but I think I am going to end up with lots of thread left, I have been so parsimonious.

Now it was time for the contrasting cuffs. I first sewed the blue band to the INside of the sleeve. I used green thread for the top (I think) and blue for the bottom. In any event, I did have the two colours of thread on the machine at the same time.

Then I sewed the ends of the cuffs together, making sure to fold precisely along the seam between the green and blue bands. At this point, I realized it was better to sew with the blue side up, so I could see where to start and end the seam and I didn't change the threads around. As I suspected, it didn't show when I was done anyway, so it didn't matter.

I trimmed the seam allowances fairly closely and turned the cuff to the right side out. Then I pressed along the seam between the blue and green bands, trying to make sure the blue was every so slightly angled toward the inside of the cuff. I wasn't entirely successful along the ends of the cuffs and a tiny line of blue does show there, now that I've finished the topstitching. But really, I don't think it's a big deal.

Finally, I did the topstitching. The way these cuffs are constructed, you fold the seam allowance under and sew the folded edge of the band over the seam line on the OUTside of the sleeve. In this case, it was the green side of the band that got stitched to the outside of the sleeve. Since I have done this manoeuver many times before, I know that in the first, outermost line of topstitching, the line that actually stitches the cuff closed and to the sleeve, the INside line of stitching (the bobbin thread line) actually ends up more on the sleeve part than on the cuff part. Therefore, I used green thread for the top AND bobbin for that line of stitching. You might have to go to the extreme close-up in Flickr to see it, but you can see that on the INside, there is green thread in that one spot. Then I switched to blue bobbin thread and stitched all around the cuff in the two rows required for the top stitching. I'll be doing the same for the bottom band.

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.