So with the pattern sorted next up is fabric prep & construction…

Fabric & Notions Used

This being a jacket to match my new reversible(ish) pencil skirt, I used mostly the same material as the skirt, namely…

• Teal & Brown Wool Acrylic Print Novelty Knit from the sweater knit section of Mood NYC.
• YKK Excella #5 (5mm teeth) Metal Zippers from Sil Thread.
• Petersham Ribbon reverse side closure.
• Vilene Bias Tape interfacing. Skirt hook & eye. Stitch Witchery fusible bonding web.

The only new ingredient was Bronze Poly Lycra Leatherette from Tissu Fabric, a cheap fake leather for the collar edging – because I can’t be bothered with non-washable real leather! I do wish I used a better quality faux leather though. The leather-like coating is already rubbing off after a few wears. Oops. I do like its look while it lasted though – it’s more copper (my favorite metallic color) than bronze.

Now the main fabric from Mood I love more and more. It was quite easy to work with. And the color while a bit dull on the bolt has proved to be a real team player in my wardrobe.

However, for this pattern, I was still a bit worried about whether this  sweatshirtish fabric has enough heft. Many reviewers complained about the huge collar not standing up right like in the cool Burda photos. Burda’s recommended fabric – ponte knit – simply doesn’t have the heft to keep the single layer collar standing proud and tall. Nancy K suggested that the leather edge binding might provide the requisite support. But then the inner part of the collar – the stand & turn part – would still be a bit wimpy. I could have added facing to the fronts and collar as Allison C suggested. But I was a bit unsure about the fabric initially, so didn’t buy yards and yards of it.

Anyway, I decided to try felting the portion for the jacket. Big mistake. Even though it’s suppose to be wool acrylic blend, it didn’t felt at all after being put through hot wash & tumble drying. It just pilled. And softened further!!!??? Oops. Thank goodness I had this pill shaver gizmo in my sewing gadget cupboard. It managed to get rid of most of the fuzz, though it could do nothing about the slight softening. Lesson learnt: don’t be stingy – test on a swatch! BTW the fabric does take gentler wash cycle & air drying. I like to pre-wash almost everything to weed out divas from my closet.

See those little white pills on the upper right! The left is the unmolested skirt fabric.

The shaver gizmo to the rescue!

Almost as good as the unmolested skirt fabric!

Construction Notes

As you guessed it, I’ve ignored the pattern instruction again. It’s more atrocious than usual. I’m tempted to rewrite it even though I have no need of it. But that of course wasn’t why I ignored it. With the pattern changes I made (eg cut on peplum) & the techniques I’ve already chosen for the matching skirt, the instruction would have been useless to me anyway. So just some construction notes below in case you want to try out some of the same techniques…

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• Like with the skirt I’ve flatlocked almost everything – even the sleeve / armscye. The only seam that’s not flatlocked is the left front princess seam with the zipper tape. I think theoretically it could have been, but the zipper teeth wouldn’t feed properly. So the fabric edges was flatlocked first, then zipper & seaming basted in place, then topstitched along either side of the flatlock edge finishing.
• Sleeve zippers are attached in the same way as the skirt. The bodice front zipper tape is covered with the leatherette rather than left exposed like on the sleeves.
• As I’m using leatherette rather than real leather, the front & collar edging is only done on one side of the fabric and applied like bias facing tape (so with seam allowances). But I had to use Stitch Witchery to fuse this leatherette to the fabric and to itself to keep it flat. Rather than top-stitching the tape, it’s machine sewn on the outer edge & hand slip-stitched on the inner edge.
• The hem is again 2-thread wrap overlock edge finishing like on the skirt. There’s no peplum facing on my reversible version – the whole jacket is single layer.
• Instead of snaps for the right front princess seam closure, I added hook closures to match the one on the skirt AA side. So again, I folded petersham ribbons in the same way as on the skirt to act like frog closures, fell-stitched these in place, then sewn the hook & eyes to the ribbons. These were placed just below the waist, at the underbust, above the bust, and at the chest (spaced evenly of course).

Style Shots & Mug Shots

So how does it look? Before the reveal let’s have a reminder of the design & pattern photo again for comparison…

Burdastyle 2013-11-117

And here’s my finished version…

Final verdict

I was planning to reuse the pattern, but I’m on the fence about it after my collar turned out just as floppy as everyone else’s (apart from those smart Russian / Polish ladies who made theirs with fabric worthy of cold weather coats).

Having said that, I’m very pleased with this particular make. The fabrics, the pattern, the details just came together beautifully. It’s got the perfect blend of edginess & femininity for my cup of tea. And like its matching skirt it’s reversible-ish too! Perfect for a style commitment-phobe like me!

OK, there’s a fair few photos to show for this project, so I’m mixing things up a bit and splitting this into two posts. First up, the pattern & alterations.

The Design & Pattern

Burdastyle 2013-11-117

Doesn’t the jacket look so cool in Burda magazine’s photos? I was seduced. Ever since I sew Marc Jacob’s pastel moto jacket I wanted one in non-traditional color & fabric. I like the simple style lines. It offers a load of possibilities for showing off my double-face fabric: color-blocking, visible reverse side.

Size Used

34 rather than recommended 36. Because it’s closes to my Jacket Block which I’m using to guide fitting changes.

Changes Made

Fitting changes

I’m still trying to work out the best way to use my Jacket Blocks for altering commercial patterns to improve the fit. Here’s my current not so scientific approach:

1. Lay the commercial pattern over my Jacket Block aligning at CF / CB waist. I’ve traced the pattern onto tissue paper, but also kept my Block on tracing paper to make this easier.
2. Compare & decide what needs changing, and by how much. Now the how much is a bit of a dilemma, especially when my Block is currently more a Sloper with only the wearing ease and no design ease. There’s the risk of removing all the design ease and end up with the same jacket over and over again. So I decided to try this: Where the pattern doesn’t match the Jacket Block, I check if it at least matches the Moulage & Top/Dress markings before deciding whether to change or not. (My Jacket Block also has markings for the Moulage & Top/Dress Block’s key reference points like bust & shoulder points, bust/waist/hip widths.) For example, I didn’t increase the CF  pattern piece’s bust width to meet the Jacket Block bust points because it already meets the Moulage & Top/Dress Block bust point. And while total front bust width (after FBA) is less than my Jacket Block, it’s close to my Top/Dress Block bust width; add to that the back Bust width is slightly wider than my Jacket Block (at princess seam), so I think I have enough bust ease.
3. Where the shape is really different from my Block, and standard alteration doesn’t get it close enough, I sliced & diced the innard of a pattern piece to pull the seam line into a shape that more closely resemble my Block. See the changes to the Front & Back side bodice pieces for example.

So using my Fitted Shoulder-Princess No-Shoulder-Pad Jacket Block (what a mouthful!) as the yard stick, these are the changes I end up making:

• Short Waist Adjustment: This time shortened at the chest level so the armhole is smaller / higher like on my Block. Sleeve cap height also shortened to match.
• Low Bust Adjustment
• Front-Back Body Shape / Full Bust Adjustment: Done the unorthodox way mentioned in my previous post. So shifted some of the dart shaping from side seam to the front and back princess seams.
  
  

  Splicing & dicing to pull the seamline into the right shape.

  

  How my unorthodox approach compares with the standard FBA approach.

  

  My unorthodox approach to get side front to match my Jacket Block.

  

  Standard FBA result in less width at the bust & armhole area that’d need more fiddling.
• Sloping Shoulder Adjustment
• Uneven Shoulder Adjustment: Done the Cabrera-Meyers “Classic Tailoring Techniques: A Construction Guide for Men’s Wear” way, except with tissue pattern rather than the actual fabric. See my summary in a previous post.
• Short Arm Adjustment: Partly done in the lower sleeve area (not hem), and partly in the sleeve cap area to match length removed from bodice armscye for Short Waist Adjustment. So the sleeve cap is shallower.
• Widen Sleeve slightly to give me 2″ ease at bicep level. A few other people have complained that the sleeve is too narrow for them, even with stretch fabric. So you may want to check the widths. I have thin arms & could have gotten away with no widening. But 2″ sounds more comfortable for a jacket. I widened at the back sleeve seam. This also gives me a bit more ease in the sleeve armscye – the original pattern doesn’t seem to have any ease. I also followed Jeffery Diduch’s instruction in Threads July 2013 for guidance on how much sleeve armscye ease to include where. I kind of winged this as the pattern doesn’t have as many match point as in his pattern. But I subsequently found his online instruction on how to check the ease of these commercial pattern sleeves.
  
  

  Checking the sleeve shaping & ease at underarm…

  

  Checking the sleeve height…

Design changes

• Shortened sleeve further: Removed the extra 3″ length in sleeve as I want a more traditional Moto Jacket sleeve.
• Added sleeve vent & zippers.
• Removed the waistline seam by cutting the peplums as one with the bodice pieces. I was worried about thickness of multiple layers at intersecting seams.

Rather than testing the fit next with muslin I cheated with pinned pattern tissue. Looks OK on Q me thinks…apart from that humongous collar which needed slight shaving / shaping near the collar points so the fabric wouldn’t get all bunched up when the front is zipped to couple of inches above the bust (like in the Burda catalog photo).

So here are my final patterns. I thought I was going to reuse this pattern, so transferred the patterns to card stock (minus seam allowances) to use for fabric cutting.

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Tomorrow: The fabric, construction notes & reveal!