Red wool coat

How did it get to be the last day of September?

One thing I don't often mention is the prep work for starting a project. I have never used this pattern before so I like to read the instructions first. Then I have to cut apart all the pattern pieces and see which ones I need to use. I double-check them with the list shown above.

The only garment in this pattern is the coat (some have all sorts of things like pants and skirts and things) but there are some variations. I'll be using all the big pattern pieces but maybe not all of the small ones. Once I have the pieces separated, I iron them flat.

I am going to make the long sleeves with 6 buttons on the front (view C) but I want to make the slash/welt pockets (views A and B), not the patch pockets. I also like the detail of the band around the sleeve but it is only on the short sleeve and the 3/4 sleeve.

When you look at the instructions for the sleeve band, you see it is only decorative and not functional. Interestingly, it is made from three pieces of fabric so that the seaming becomes part of the decorative design. I have been debating with myself if I want to use the print lining I got for the backing of the sleeve bands and I haven't finished that debate yet. I lean toward NOT doing it, just because I am not familiar with this pattern and there may be a good reason not to use lining fabric to back the band.

I have got enough fabric that I could make them both ways and see which looked better. You can see that the band gets sewn to the sleeve and the button is just for show. But I like the way it looks on the photo and in the drawings so I think I will make bands and then decide as I go along, whether I will attach them to the sleeve. They get sewn into a seam but I could still pick them out later if I don't like them.

Here I have laid out all the pieces and pinned them, except for the bands. I am going to use Mum's old electric scissors to cut this coat out. I keep forgetting I have electric scissors and while I may not use them for delicate stuff, they should be perfect for this sort of wool.

Finishing things up and a new jacket

I am making progress! I have made a pot of blueberry tea to have while I blog. Then I have to study some for this test I am taking on Monday. It may lead to a job as an adjudicator at a tribunal so keep your fingers crossed. Then I will finally have somewhere other than school whence I can wear all my fancy duds! (Hmm, that doesn't look right but my understanding is that "whence" means "to where" so it should be correct.) I'll alternate between studying and sewing to keep fresh at both.

First I took a photo of the two tops I finished. I haven't worn them yet but I have worn the cream silk one I made three times now! It works beautifully under a suit jacket and I can get warm at the front of the class without dying from dehydration.

I finally sewed a buttonhole on that checked jacket and finished it with the large, slightly sparkly gold button that won the contest. There is a sparkly gold thread that runs through the brown stripes in the check and I think the button goes well with the whole thing. Not having worn this yet, I will reserve judgment on the total effect.

I finished the wool skirt. As usual, I converted darts to ease - those are the wrinkles you see pinned into the skirt as it is attached to the facing. I also basted the lining to the skirt around the top before sewing it all to the facing. That's that line of stitching you see showing on the lining.

Because this is such nice fabric and I want the skirt to look polished, I sewed seam binding to the raw edge of the hem and hand sewed the hem up. The lining hem has not been sewed yet - that's the raw pinked edge you see.

Because the skirt is surprisingly heavy, I sewed hangar tabs to the facing. It makes the skirt hang like this and I have to iron it the morning I want to wear it, to get those drape marks out.

But if I hang it with clothespins like this, it falls off the hangar after a while.

In the meantime, I have been thinking about my old LL Bean barn jacket. I have had this great coat for over 15 years now and I used to wash it whenever the dog put her muddy paws on it so it got washed often. Now it has frayed around the pockets (which are lined at the edge with dark green corduroy),

and it has frayed on the sleeves where I used to turn up the cuffs, which are also lined at the bottom edge with the corduroy. I still think I can get some wear out of it so I am wondering if I should get some gimp or other braid and sew it over the broken bits?

That said, my next project is a new, cool weather jacket. I thought this pattern was so cute, but of course, I cannot imagine making a jacket that you wear outside in anything other than full length sleeves! Maybe someone meant for this jacket to be worn walking around the mall but if I was inside, it would be too hot and when I am outside, I want proper sleeves. So I am going to make it in the full sleeve but with the slash pocket of the other views (A and B). I have not decided on the buttons but I think I will be going for 6 of them, not 4, for better control in the wind. It is certainly not a jacket I would wear when it's minus 10C but I think with the right layers and accessories, I could wear it to minus 5C. I'll let you know later.

When you wear some kind of outer garment 9 months of the year, you want a selection and you want one of them to be red. I have some "boiled wool" in a nice bright red here, although I think it is mixed with some nylon. For a change, I didn't pre-wash it and so once a year, I will have to dry clean this. I think I was afraid the fabric would shrivel into weirdness so I decided to go for dry cleaning later. I also got some "fashion polyester" for the lining. Instead of getting "regular" lining, I saw this fun polka dot stuff on sale and thought it would be cute whenever I took the jacket off. I have not made this pattern before so I suppose I am risking a bit here but it is a coat and so it won't be fitted too closely and I think I can get away with not making a muslin - which I never make anyway. If it doesn't work for me, some lucky Sally Ann client will get a unique jacket!

Silk tops and wool skirt

Ten days since my last post. Hmm. I've been busy! But I haven't even finished those tops. So back to where I left off...

That silk I bought on sale was so narrow (how narrow was it?) that I had to cheat to get the tops cut out. I had only bought a metre of each colour, thinking that was enough. As you can see in this layout photo, there was no way I could get both the front and the back cut out on a fold. I thought I could fold each selvage into the middle and do it that way but it was just too narrow.

Even though I put the back seam right on the selvages, the sides overlapped by a few millimetres and I had to make them with a 3/8 seam allowance. Talk about cutting it close.

Here is the blue top, inside out, with the back up. You can see I didn't need to finish the centre back seam because the selvages are already finished. I zigzagged the other seams and trimmed them, although they are not trimmed yet in this photo.

Here I am, ironing the neck facing on the ham. It really is easier on something like a neckline or shoulder, to use the ham, instead of trying to iron it on a flat board. In this photo, I have already understitched the facing and all I need to do now, is iron it folded under.

Here's the ham from another angle. After this, I stitched the facing down to the shoulder seam by machine stitching in the ditch of the shoulder seam from the outside of the garment.

That was the end of the machine sewing. From here, to finish the tops, I have to hand stitch the hems. They are pinned up and ready to go. I generally save my hand sewing for sitting in front of the tv. These tops look awfully shiny and that pink one is very pink, but when I wear them, it will only be under jackets so all you will see is a little bit of the top at the neck.

Because I only have hand sewing left, I am not breaking My Rule by starting a new project upstairs in my sewing room! This is the beautiful wool I got at Darrell's sale. He only had the oatmeal colour left at the sale and I kicked myself when I discovered he had had two other colours - blue and green - as they would have made perfect, all-purpose serviceable skirts. Oh well.

I am making my tried and true, no-waistband, knee-length skirt with a small vent in the back. It will go with everything this Winter!

Votes are in!

I got 16 votes, including one on Flickr. I thank you all for spending the time to look at these things! My husband says that the pictures don't really show how the buttons look but they are the best I can do. If I count his vote, I have 17 in total.

I got 5 for the small gold spiral. I got 3 for the brown plastic one. And I got 8 for the large gold one. I was leaning toward the large gold one all along, and in fact, when I was thinking buttons, before I even pulled them out of my stash, I thought of it as an option. I was concerned that it would be too sparkly and when I looked at the three finalists over and over, I started leaning toward the smaller gold spiral. It blends right into the jacket fabric, which is both good and bad, depending on the look you want to achieve. I also had a vote for doing the snap and no buttonhole thing but it is a little fiddly to be doing and undoing snaps and I am not a fan of fiddly. Form should follow function!

I am therefore going to make a large buttonhole, the size of the big gold one and sew on the big gold button. Then, if I have doubts or get weird looks, I can hand stitch the end of the buttonhole closed and take off the large button and go for a smaller one. How's that?

In the meantime, I have started back to work and am scrambling to finish the little silk tops for under jackets. I wore the embroidered linen to my first classes yesterday and felt very cute. :) But no one commented on it. :( I wore the cream silk top too. It was a hot day and although the college is sort of air conditioned, because I was not told my first class was in a different room, I had to sprint around the campus and was sweating freely by the time I found my proper classroom. I was glad I had on light and natural fabrics! Tomorrow is also supposed to be hot so I am thinking I will wear one of the new silk tops under a light cotton jacket with the shorter, "extra" navy linen skirt (that I got out of the left-over linen). We'll see.

Buttons

Votes are split between the shiny brown plastic button and the larger shiny gold button. I myself am still leaning toward the smaller, duller gold button. I need more votes! Four does not a survey make.

Here they are again, pinned on to the neck of the jackette.
First the shiny brown.

Next, the large gold.

Then the smaller gold.
I suppose I could make the largest size of buttonhole and then switch out the buttons from time to time. More votes!

Speaking of buttons, I finally got some for the embroidered linen. It was a tough contest at the store, with Darrell and Carmen going their ways and me going mine. Carmen didn't care for my final choice (too sparkly) but Darrell picked it out as a possibility so I guess he's okay with it.

I settled on making the stripes in the "shell" go horizontal and the metallic stripe goes up toward my right shoulder, instead of the way it is in the previous close-up. The buttons are a little oddly paced in this pic because I had just pinned them on. Now I have sewed them on but I was too lazy to put the finished jacket back on Rose.

While I am prewashing some oatmeal coloured wool for a skirt, I am going to quickly sew up another top in some silk charmeuse. I love silk next to my skin and have decided to have a few tops to be worn under a jacket. Since it is so small, and since I have modified the pattern, it only takes one meter to make, as long as the fabric is at least 112 cm wide. It's a squeaker!

Woolly jacket

Nearly done!

I decided to topstitch around the back of the neck only. The fronts are all interfaced so I don't have to worry about the seams coming unravelled. But at the back of the neck, the thin lining fabric is sewn to the loosely woven woolly fabric and I feared an early dismantling of the neck due to fabric failure. I sewed a second line of stitching beside the first but then, after I had turned the jacket right side out, I put a line of topstitching on to reinforce everything.

It fits and doesn't bind anywhere. Maybe they fixed the pattern after earlier complaints? Maybe that little side piece went missing? It is very small - a "jackette". The sleeves are 3/4 and the hem hits only a few inches below my waist. But I did only have 1.1 metres of fabric! But I like it. It's light and shouldn't make me too hot while I wave my arms about in the front of the classroom.

Now I just have to choose the button. There's only one button at the neck. Carmen suggested yesterday in the comments that she liked the largest gold button, in the lower right in this pic. I like that big button too but I am also leaning toward the shiny plastic brown button in the lower left. The big gold one is really big and almost sparkly. Maybe I should go for the smaller, duller gold one in the upper right?

Woolly jacket

I really put a push on to work on this jacket last night, as I knew I was heading to Darrell's today for his one-day-only 50% sale. And I got some lovely wool too! So now I really have to get cracking.

Last night, I got all the pieces together. Here are the sleeves, one right side out and the other wrong side out. I got the horizontal stripes lined up as sharp as can be.

I got the lining and facing pieces together.

And I got the jacket pieces together, before I put the sleeves on. I tried it on and it didn't seem like I was going to have problems with the armpits.

Then I put the sleeves on and tried it on and still no problems. This picture doesn't tell you much! But I thought I'd see how I could do a solo photo, holding the camera at arm's length, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, so I could see what was on the camera screen. Anyway, then I attached the lining jacket to the jacket, around the edges of the front and neck. The pattern instructions called for some other, more complicated way of putting it together and I bailed, because I know how to make a lined jacket without fiddling around.

Here's another shot of the jacket inside-out, but after I attached the lining to it. I have lifted up one sleeve. It looks like it bags under the arm but it doesn't bind. Maybe the problem mentioned earlier came from how that small side piece under the arm was handled? I can't say.

Here's what the seam looks like where I attached the front to the facing. Even though I lined up the bottom stripe, the stripes don't match all the way up. Weird. It won't matter because there are no lapels and so you won't see how the stripes don't match. Of course, I haven't ironed the seam open and haven't turned the jacket and haven't ironed it flat again. So maybe it will be okay. I'll know when I run back upstairs now, to finish this jacket, so I can sew something else!

In the meantime, this jacket (it's so small I want to call it a jackette) calls for one large button at the neckline. Here is a collection from my stash. Hmm.

Woolly jacket

I had a lovely parental unit visit over the weekend, but with that and trying to squeeze that last of the Summer out of the last of Summer, and school starting next week (I teach), I have not been sewing!

Even though this jacket is really a muslin (and if it doesn't work, it'll go to the Sally Ann), I am compelled to finish the inside as well as if it wasn't. And if it does work and I do wear it, then I will be glad I did finish the inside. I used pinking shears to cut the lining pieces. The "wool" is loosely woven so I have zigzagged all the edges that will be ironed open at seams. The shoulders will be zigagged and trimmed after they are sewn so I didn't do those ahead of the construction. The entire fronts are interfaced and I used iron-on interfacing so I didn't need to zigzag those edges. And the front facings are also interfaced. This is one of the few times I have put interfacing on the entire front (not just the facings) so I am looking forward to how that works and feels, assuming I end up wearing the jacket.

Little woolly jacket - we hope

First, cleaning up leftovers.

I had quite a bit of the navy linen blend left over so I decided to make a plain skirt. I had made a long, high-waisted skirt to match the short navy jacket. But like white shirts, I don't think you can ever have too many navy skirts. So I used the reliable, slightly below the waist, waistband-less skirt and hemmed it at the knee. This also allowed me to verify how much fabric I need to make one of these skirts, so I can get 0.8 metres of some plain wool to make a few more. I seem to have a lot of wacky jackets and print shirts so I need plain skirts to go with.

Next, a new jacket pattern.
In a previous post, I was warned in the comments against using this pattern. Marji said she and other people had ended up throwing out the jacket after they made it, due to problems under the arm.

I laid out the pattern pieces and overlaid them with tried-and-true pieces from other patterns. Nothing seemed too amiss. And since I had this piece of acrylic that I got as a remnant just sitting there in my stash, I decided to be reckless and make the new pattern.

I had exactly 1.1 metres of this acrylic stuff. I got the remnant thinking I would make a skirt but the more I looked at the loose weave, the less I liked the skirt idea. I decided to make the view with no collar at all and three-quarter sleeves and I just squeezed all the pattern pieces on to the fabric.

In the hopeful anticipation that the jacket will work, I cut each piece out in a single layer so that the houndstooth will match everywhere and be straight. I even cut the back out, which is normally on the fold, by cutting out one half and then folding the pattern piece over and cutting out the other half.

Rather than trying to match the notches, I cut out the front and back and side pieces with the bottoms lined up with a white stripe.

When I got one piece cut out, I laid it down on the fabric, right sides together and lined up all the stripes and pinned the pieces together and cut out the corresponding other piece, so they would be identical mirror image pieces. Now for the interfacing and lining and then we shall see if this thing goes together or not.

White jacket and other things finished

I got bored with sewing the white jacket and violated my Rule and made a navy denim skirt in the meantime. In my defense, I had had the navy denim hanging over the railing since Spring, planning to make the skirt. It was after I finished the white denim skirt and realized what a good job I'd done and how much I was already wearing it, that I caved and interrupted the jacket to make the other skirt.

It's like my navy denim jacket - something I have always wanted but never had until I made it for myself. It has pockets, a "waist"band, front fly and flat felled seams. A classic.

To cut down on bulk, I lined the pockets with some craft cotton I had, just for fun.

Since I was on a roll with finishing projects, I sewed three snaps to the embroidered linen jacket. I didn't cover them because, when I tried putting even the thin silk over the snap, it snagged and made the unsnapping difficult. I will probably always wear this jacket done up anyway. Now I just have to find new buttons.

Next, I pick-stitched the facings to the front of the navy linen blend jacket.

I used navy thread and you really can't see the stitching, which is what I wanted in this case.

Finally, I also finished the white jacket. I really like the accent of the wood buttons. What next!?