Tartan jacket

Burda 05-2009-112



The back, with the box pleat and the elasticated sleeve band, are really nice features I think.



Although I really liked my twist bubble skirt I could see it wasn't working for me. Fortunately the pleats used a lot of fabric which was easy to repurpose.




I saw a very funky outfit in a cafe recently - a simple skirt and top with a gorgeous plaid jacket and a hand crocheted scarf and suddenly I really wanted a plaid jacket.

I was a little hesitant about the style on me since the line under the bust and the bold fabric are what my husband calls "brave design decisions."

I liked this pattern because it was made of lots of small pieces so I could use the skirt pieces running with the grain and I had enough scraps left to cut out the bottom half and match the side check too. I couldn't do anything really clever with the other bits because I didn't have enough fabric, and I am a little relieved about that because plaid matching is something that makes me cross-eyed.

And who can argue with those "eat all you like" tummy pleats? Definitely a jacket for a night out.



I made some important "learning experiences" with this jacket which I want to share with you so you too can *learn*.

I put in one of the welts back to front, ripped it out, and then reinserted it upside down! Third time I got it right, but I had damaged the fabric quite a lot with all the unpicking and resewing. The golden rule of welt sewing should be "interface under the pocket before you cut to the corner" for such eventualities - it really helps to hold the fabric together.

All in all - considering I cut and resewed it three times it doesn't look too bad:



The other mistake is that I didn't read the instructions carefully enough for the front zipper. I am still kicking myself for rushing ahead without double checking - I wanted to make sure the lines across the jacket matched when the zipper was up, so I used 'steam a seam' to secure the front zipper in place. As you know, that stuff sets like concrete. Once I had steamed it in, there is no moving that zipper. Imagine my horror on realising that by attaching the front 1 cm back from the teeth that I had inadvertently increased the front by a size!

The whole point was to make it so fitted through and under the bust to avoid that 'puppies in a sack' look!

And no way to fix it! In the end, I took in the side seams which in itself was no easy task since the under bust bias strip is attached over the top, meaning I had to resew it as well.

But I am really pleased with the end result. I really like my jacket - while not the most flattering shape for me, I think it works well enough. It also adds a nice layer of warmth for our blustery spring days.



I hope to manage one more "selvage/salvage" (thank you Carolyn) project for September, and then it's time to welcome "outfits October!"

Explorations in the ugly aesthetic: the brocade bomber

Post editing note - added some clearer photos - and yes Neighbourhood gal - it's super comfy, and yes Audrey you are so right - I am going to flog this jacket till it's threadbare.

Burda 10-2009-129




Here I am in my latest creation, the brocade bomber. In case you think I whipped this up in the last 24 hours, rest assured, I had 95% finished it before I went on holiday last week.

I didn't consult my inner taste guide for this one. I knew it would say, "no way" and I SO wanted to make it.

The fabric came from Nick's. I managed to talk my son into going to a fabric shop. Normally he says, "no fabric shop, no thank you." The power of food bribes has dimished considerably since his diet regime began because there's not much incentive in a carob tofu ball. However this time I bought out the big guns and offered him a preservative sugar free fruit juice in exchange for 5 minutes in the shop. I also told him he could choose some fabric.

He picked up a bolt off the table and lugged it to the counter.
"This one" he said.
"What is it I'm buying", I asked Jamie, the store manager. He cut a strip and burned it. He cut another strip and burned and smelled it some more.
"well it's not polyester rubbish," he said, "I don't know what it is."

What it turned out to be was Donna Karan Viscose/wool/acetate/polyester and it retails for $48 a metre at Global Fabrics. You can go and buy yourself some now, if you want. Sadly Nick's has run out of it at $4 a metre, otherwise I'd be letting you all in on it.

Nice one son, very classy.

Anyway, I felt since the fabric was so cheap that it wouldn't hurt to take a few risks, since I would lose nothing but my time and I was sure to have fun on the way.

I wanted to keep the fabric as whole as possible, and to make something that allowed it to drape. I also felt something this decorative would need a fairly casual style otherwise it would be too formal for everyday wear. Hence the bomber jacket. My only real concern was the lack of shaping which is not the most flattering look for curves.

How casual? Casual enough for the zipper just to be plonked down on top of the front:



And here we have it! It's nice to make things once and a while that are not your "colour" and not for your "body shape" - it beaks the monotony of dressing by numbers. It's also good to do it only once a while, otherwise you have a wardrobe of things you feel slightly leary of.



Close up of fabric and welt pockets - these ones are quite easy.



For me, the secret to pulling off "nana chic" sucessfully will be to restrain it so that the reference is clear but the look is not too aging.

Here's the back - that's where the blouson really comes into its own:

The trashy jacket

I have been doing a lot of cooking. Seriously, a lot of cooking - baking once in the morning and then making a full dinner. I never realised before how much I relied on purchased food: yoghurt, bread, plain biscuits, crackers - always purchased. Now everything has to be made from scratch because B is not allowed preservatives.

Truly it's like going back in time 100 years.

In the evening I've been doing a bit of sewing. I remade the Palmer/Pletsch perfect jean jacket in faux fur (McCalls 5860). I'm not sure why but it seemed a good idea at the time.



Now it seems a bit of a crazy idea as fur is a bit bulky and it's so hard and shiny. Feeling a little like I'm working the aging rocker look.



The good news is now that I've made it I've realised that the denim one was quite good after all and I'm actually enjoying wearing that. This would be the first time I've preferred the muslin over the final product but hey at least something's wearable.

I really love the touch of the silky fur (it's a beautiful cotton/viscose mix) but I think that may be female specific. My husband's verdict was that the jacket was trashy looking and the idea of a hirsute female had no appeal whatsoever.

So it's off to the magic wardrobe with this one too!

The quite good perfect jean jacket

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments - I really appreciate them. It feels like we have turned a significant corner now and although there is a long road ahead, it feels a more hopeful one.

Roimata I'd love your Gluten free recipes, and that goes for anyone else who has some winners tucked away. So far I have made some really disgusting bread that got binned, and a passable banana rice loaf. My email address is in my profile - many thanks!

I had this denim for a while and suddenly had this whim to make the Palmer/Pletsch perfect jean jacket (McCalls 5860). The denim was a heavy sample fabric ordered in by Liz Mitchell. She had a factory sale 2 weeks before she went into liquidation and I bought it from the designer herself. Was very sad to learn she closed up that arm of her business such a short time later.

This is a test garment, and there will be changes, for sure. The light is very poor today so I haven't been able to get good pictures, but you get the idea.




I shifted the breast pocket to the hip. I need pockets for keys and tissues and the idea of wadding up my bust line with a bunch of kleenex seemed a bad idea.



Now here's an oddity about this pattern - despite there being 54 illustrated steps, picture 30 shows the under collar being sewn onto the outside of the jacket and there is nothing about turning and finishing the collar stand. Far be it from me to question the perfection of the Palmer/Pletsch perfect jean jacket pattern instructions so if anyone has the answer to this mystery let me know. Haven't been losing sleep over it, but there was a lot of swearing when I realised I had cut and attached the WRONG COLLAR.

So I hope to show you an new an improved version of this jacket soon. This one will probably go to the Sally Army for being a bit snug through the bust - although denim does loosen up in mysterious ways so perhaps I won't be too hasty. At any rate you can see that despite all the cooking of revolting foods I have been doing recently I still found time to sew.

I think we always find time for things we really need to.

Second time lucky (no really, this time)

Burda 06 -2010- 114



Back



The buttons and lining - the buttons are vintage and the lining is viscose from the Zambesi fabric sale ($2 a metre, read it and weep).



Well this is my second attempt at this post, the first I took down because of technical difficulties, so it really is second time lucky on all fronts!

After wearing my "test garment" (thank you Gail) for a day I was able to adjust the fit. The shoulders formed creases where my shoulder was narrower than the pattern, and so I just creased them out! The front kept sliding off, so I increased the FBA on the side part with the hope the deeper cut would make it stay put. It doesn't. Hmm. More to learn.

I then wanted to make another test garment, to see if these changes were enough, and then I remembered the story of Borana. My brother was really into horse racing as a teenager and one year he predicted a rank outsider, called Borana, would win the trotting cup. He talked of nothing else the week before, but at the last minute, when he saw the odds were 76-1 he lost faith and put his money on the favourite. Coming into the last lap Borana was last, but put on a brave sprint to win the cup. It still stands as one of the highest payouts to win on the trotting cup and my brother was guttered.

Although I remember feeling upset for him at the time I think the biggest killer was losing faith in his own judgement in the face of a strong consensus believing differently.

The moral of the story for me is that sometimes you have to trust what you believe and take a chance, and so I took a deep breath and cut into the silk dupioni.

Because it was silk I had a go at underlining the fabric instead of interfacing. I used cotton batiste, cut out all the outside shell pieces, put them together with the silk, rolled them over a magazine along the grain line for turn of cloth and pinned out the excess. I then handbasted all the pieces together, after removing the hems to avoid a double layer at the bottom.



It was long and it was tedious. Was it any better than interfacing? No idea, but it took twice the time.

I am making this jacket as part of an ensemble to wear to a family wedding. The really nice thing about this wedding is that it is not the first marriage of either party. Whatever the reasons people marry again, either through death or divorce, you can be sure that between the first and subsequent marriages there has been a lot of heartache. For this reason I find these kinds of weddings even more sweet that first time affairs, because it speaks of resilience and hope and life going on.

I was so pleased to be able to use this silk. I bought it in a closing down sale, because I loved the colour but silk dupioni has to be made very carefully because it's another fabric that can be very aging if the pattern is too conservative or expected. I thought this pattern was edgy enough to take the dentures out of the fabric and reveal its pearly lustre.

So now it's on to the other parts of this wedding outfit ensemble - the white flares and navy tank. I have the white fabric ready and its a rich buttery off white. It will be soon made into a flared jeans. Women who wear white jeans have a certain rep in this country but I'm sure no-one will be thinking anything untoward when it is paired with silk dowageroni.

I have styled this with a navy tee and some jeans so you can get the idea of where I'm heading with this. You may have doubts about this concept and frankly so do I. There's just one word that keeps me going, "Borana".

The art of the wearable muslin

Happy New Year everyone! May your sewing be fun and your work wearable. Now how's that for a sewing blessing?

I have loved this jacket (BurdaStyle 06-2010-114) for quite some time, and while I was in sunny Nelson, far from Internet access and a sewing machine, I kept thinking how I'd love to make it in silk dupioni, and wear it with white flares and a navy blue tank top. I could not get the image out of my head, and so the quest to make the whole outfit as I see it in my mind's eye was born.

I wanted to muslin it first, as there are a number of areas I thought might get me into trouble and I was right. My preference is for wearable muslins, because I don't like wasting my time or my resources and a jacket is pretty big time investment to go straight to the bin.

The secret to a wearable muslin is to choose fabric with a similar hand so it will behave in similar ways to your final fabric but to create a different mood to it by using fabric which makes a different statement.

I therefore decided to make this muslin a relaxed summer jacket by making it unlined, unbuttoned, and using some more of the cotton linen blend I used for my cargo pocket skirt.



I used Gigi's Hong Kong finish tutorial to finish the facings and hems, but overlocked all the princess and side seams as they were too curved to take a binding treatment, and I needed to be able to alter them for fit at a later stage.



The instructions on this jacket were as clever as they were indecipherable. When I finally understood what they were telling me to do I felt so smug. For example, in order to get the front lapel to sit flat they get you to pin the roll line....




...then roll the roll line and then pin the edges and sew using the outer edge as the guide. isn't that a clever way for a hobby seamstress to master the art of turn of cloth without having to draft anything?



The shoulders and raglan sleeve are dramatically curved which makes fitting difficult - the pattern calls for raglan shoulder pads to support the area so leaving them out was problematic.



So here is my first item for 2011. I am very happy with it!

P.S.
I have been falling behind in my commenting - like many other bloggers I am finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with what everyone is doing! Please know that I still love what you are making and read with interest - if I don't leave a comment it's not because your post or sewing is undeserving and I hope you feel free to do the same with my blog.

Burda trench jacket 03-2009-114

Back details - storm flap, and belt tied at the back to pull in the back waist.



Sometimes I just don't know if a style is too old or too young until I've made it. In the case of this trench jacket, it's not that the style is too old or too young, it's the fabric. I never thought about fabric being age appropriate but this is simply too mature for my early middle years.

Despite this jacket being Not Quite Right I've got a soft spot for it: I'm fond of a little "frump" strange as it may seem. But more importantly, it is the living embodiment of my philosophy that it is a good thing for a home sewer to experiment and take risks with their sewing. It's perfectly OK to make stuff you would never dream of buying, let alone try on if you saw it in a shop - you are taking a risk with your vision.

The story of how I came by the fabric is a funny one. I got an email from my Sewing Guild buddies to say that Jane Daniels was having a fabric sale. Jane Daniels is an upmarket designer who designs for conservative older women, the type who have "investment" wardrobes. I took my son along with me and he wreaked havoc through the bolts of delicate silk and voiles. In the end I just grabbed a few things, whatever caught my eye. In amoungst the silks was this, and as soon as I lay my paw on it I thought, "this isn't silk." But no matter - at that stage my son was lying on the floor with flailing arms and legs pulling the most spectacular paddy so I just bought it. When I got home and did a burn test I was dismayed to find I'd bought polyester. Polyester in a humid climate is very very unpleasant, what's more I'd paid $20 for it - which wasn't even a bargain. It's a dense fabric with a lot of body, probably a taffeta, so I decided to cut my losses and make a jacket. I could line it with something more breathable and the stiff hand of the fabric would suit itself to a structured shape. What's more, it wouldn't be ruined in a downpour, which is a real consideration in this climate.

Still at the end of the day, this is a matriarch's jacket trench. It says to me, "maori hill/fendalton/wadestown/remuera/insert conservative-old-money-suburb-of-your-choice/ lady."

This is my free choice option for the wardrobe contest - I am limping to the finish line, determined to finish for reasons I can't even justify to myself. I can honestly say that sewing whatever you feel like produces a wardrobe that looks like you sewed whatever you felt like.


And that's OK with me too.

Details: the front gun flap, rolled sleeve, pleated pocket and mature fabric:

You remember a while back I said I had a few things to fix. Well, I've been fixing them. First up, my coffee cup jacket (McCalls 5327 now OOP)- you may recall me griping that the pattern was printed with no roll line, so that after I had done my adjustments to the bodice I had no idea where the lapel ended. I made a guess, and my guess was wrong. It just never sat flat. So I went back to the lovely ladies in the Bernina shop, bought a second button, put a new buttonhole 2 inches above the previous button hole and now we have a jacket which sits as the pattern originally intended. Here it is, ready for a life of grime.



Then there was this jacket (a now OOP butterick pattern). Made several years ago actually, and abandonned because of the step-pet. My husband had a cat and when I came into his life I faced some pretty stiff competition on the home front. This jacket, being a cotton velveteen, was definitely the loser and it became a virtual duster for her long hair. The other reason I abandonned it was the shoulder, which I had set using the gathering threads method and there it sat on my shoulders calling "home made" through puckered lips.



Since then of course, I mastered the jiggery pokery method of easing in a sleeve without gathering threads and this jacket got the resetting treatment, and with the sad (for my husband) demise of his cat, this jacket can now come out again to play. (the fantail broach is from Toast and Cupcakes and I love the way it looks like a bird is perched on my shoulder)




Although both patterns are now OOP a quick peruse of the McCalls/Butterick websites shows there are now almost identical jackets on the market so if you like the "wide lapel, no or single button do up" look there's still plenty of choice. Now that I look at these jackets I'm scratching my head as to exactly why I needed two navy wide lapel jackets in the first place. When you sew whatever you fancy, you find you fancy the same thing over and over again. Clearly there's a broken record going on in my head that says "navy jacket, go on you know you want ANOTHER one."

Anyway, I decided to take Miss Pinky's advice as a way of breaking free of the "look" rut and splashed out and bought several pieces of vintage fabric yesterday at Salvage. They are all flowy and drapey, as perscribed, but I wasn't sure of their pedigree. I thought the one on the left was probably rayon sateen, the middle one viscose and the right one silk.



A quick burn test proved I was right. If you don't know how to tell fabric by burning it, here's a quick guide.

Cut a swatch. Burn it. Does is melt? Synthetic. Does it keep burning and smell like burnt paper? Rayon. Does it slowly go out and smell like pot? Silk - it's got a herby, sweet, fragrant burny smell which is actually quite pleasant.

Now I'm not sure about patterns but I have dress lengths so anything goes. Am open to suggestion as this is all just an experiment anyway.

Finally a last piece of thrifting magic for you. The table we got last week off Trademe, where we did not get a bargain, but we did get a nice second-hand table. The coffee cup is a Queen Anne bone china set from the caring ladies in the village Hospice shop. The coffee was from my machine, a gift from my husband for giving birth. If I had known what was involved, I would have asked for a new lounge suite as well.

burda 03-2009-111

OK - I couldn't wait two weeks. I sat down with the book and followed the directions step by step and finally mastered sewing the inside corner to fully bag the lining (last time I bagged a lining, a finished the tricky corner by hand.)



Just call me Miss Methodical. I just couldn't BEAR to start one project while the last was still loitering in my sewing room. Anyone else out there like that? Also, anyone else out there who doesn't keep a stash? Just like to know there are other freeko-one-project-at-a-time-no-stashers out there. Let's unite people, we need to support each other.

The thing I love about Burda is the details. Look at this one, details for Africa. 1) back waist band 2) back and front yolks 3) top stitching 4) curved lapels 5) sloping centre front 6) pocket with flap. 7) interesting darts 8) fun lining I LOVE sewing details. Take a long time though and if you get 'em wrong they sing "home sewn" louder than an opera diva.



This wool crepe was not the most co-operative fabric I've ever worked with. It didn't press up that well and it shows wrinkles and puckers and was a devil to turn out evenly. I even ended up resewing a pocket flap because it looked so wonky. What sucks about that is I specifically chose this fabric because I thought, "this looks like it would make up well." Wrong. Well, right, I do like how it turned out but it was a bit of a journey with the quick-unpick to get there.

Now excuse me, I'd best get on with wearing it. It's suddenly got real warm and springish here, very soon it will be too hot to wear a wool crepe jacket. Hate for all that work to amount to a couple of outings and a feast for the moths.

It's only a hobby.

From this:



To this:




back view




That's what I tell myself when I look perilously close to taking myself too seriously on the sewing front.

Thank you for your advice about my jacket. I can tell you now that I've finished it that you were all right. How can that be? Simple - the proportions of the jacket required it to finish at the fullest part of the hip, but the pre -existing welts looked wierd held in suspension on my waist line. The only way they belonged to the jacket was to place them two thirds down the front and then they were proportional to the hem length.

No matter which way I cut it, something was going work and something was not going to work.

That, I feel, will be my first and last refashion. It was twice the work of cutting from scratch and I had to think all the time. Fancy that! Thinking all the time! At no point could I just sit down and sew something, I had to figure out how to I was going to make those pieces come back together. And how to reinterpret the design? I couldn't just sew the pattern as is.

So that's when I came up with my "it's only a hobby" mantra - take the stress out of seamstress.

It was that mantra that lead me to purchase some silk I fell madly in love with from Global fabrics. "It's my hobby, who cares if I ever wear it." (you see how useful this mantra is for justifying any kind of wildly-inappropriate-to -lifestyle fabric choices.) I had in mind Burda 05-2009-125. I was thinking that the style was too young for me, with all those frou frou details - you know the gathering and ribbons etc, but then, once again, my mantra came to the rescue. "Who cares if you're too old for it, you know it's only a dress, and making that dress is your hobby."



Here it is pinned ready for sewing on the dress from. When I bought the fabric I thought it was randomly lined, imagine my horror to find they form a 4 line repeat print that needed to be matched! Too late, I'd cut it out AND I bought the last 3 metres in the shop. Guttered. Non matching horizontal lines, how that cheapens a garment.

Thank goodness it's only a hobby.

Burda 12 -2008 -123

Thank you to all of you who voted (for me, in particular) in the ugly fabric contest, the winners have been announced, of which I was not one. It reminds me of that joke about the Jewish guy who gets a hole-in-one on the Sabbath, God's revenge being he can't boast to his mates about it. Similar awkward conversations were thus averted with my mother in law, "hey, you know that fabric you gave me, well I won, ...oh um, nothing, I mean I feel wonderful in this BEAUTIFUL skirt I made with it."

Congratulations to Johanna of the last stitch who was placed for her raincoat. Personally I have new respect for anyone who does anything with raincoat fabric and for that alone she is tops in my books.

Actually it never occured to me I might be a competitive person but those competitions are a great way to channel the sewing energy and provide some focus. So I'm all up for the little black dress and the lined jacket ones later in the year.

Yes, I am definitely feeling the sewing love at the moment but my productivity has received a big kick in the pants by a little boy who has decided that 4:30 am is THE time to get up and play for the day, and that an afternoon's sleep of an hour is all that is required. Harruph!

The less time I have, the more I want to do. I want to do a lot at present, but I've put another winter coat on the back burner because sewing a coat half an hour at a time is too painful to even contemplate.

When I worked in education with school holidays I'd loaf about at home sewing for a week at a time. Then because we had flexi hours at work I reduced to a 4 day week and had 3 day sewing weekends.

Aaaaaaahhhhh those were the days my friends. Finished the jacket yesterday. Verrrry pleased with it. Perfect stay at home Auckland mum wear. Warm enough to take the chill, casual enough to look in keeping with the playground, fun enough to keep a smile on my very tired face.

Bagged the lining, came out well, call me old fashioned, but I actually prefer hand sewing my hems.



I am now set to work (half a painful hour at a time) on my retro pattern. I bought some cheap 'n' nasty fabric to muslin it - I don't usually bother but I have never graded a pattern down before so I'm allowing for plenty of room for error. The good news was that it wasn't that hard to do, the bad news is because I didn't have to change that much (it's a size 20 1/2).

Three cheers for modern vanity sizing, personally can't get enough of it.

Nearly finished. Lining to go - I thought I'd try my hand at bagging it, nice to add a few new skills to my repertoire.

I have mostly sewed this jacket without instructions, not for want of trying. I just could not understand them. At all.

"Separate zip. Place zip face down to right front on lengthwise edge of self facing, right side of fabric so that zip tape is centred on marked seam line. Stitch zip tape in place. Stitch on remainder of right facing piece. Lay facing forward over joining seam and topstitch close to seam."

Right. Did you get that? Good. Was I supposed to sew the zip to the right front or the right front facing? Where is the remainder of the right facing piece please? If I press the seam forward then I am actually topstitching next to the zipper. Is that where you mean?

I liked the breast pockets, so enlarged them and put them on my hips and took out the zipper pockets - let's face it, I need quilted fabric on my bust line like Dolly Parton needs a padded bra.

They also want you to attach this mysterious thing called webbing to your belt and sleeve tabs. I think they mean cotton twill tape. Anyway, I didn't want anything to mess with my dots, so left it off.

I get a lot of fun out of joyful fabrics like polka dots. You can't take yourself too seriously in a dotted dacron jacket. It's good therapy for picky sewers like myself, who need to lighten up big time when it comes to their own sewing projects.

This jacket has lots and lots of details. It is 3 dots, and had 17 pieces to draft or trace out - which is a record for me. By far and away the hardest part of this project has been working with the instructions.

I think I've just found my dream job - writing instructions for Burda magazine.

Some of the details: belt, tabbed sleeves and patch pockets



The collar is designed to stand, and has a tab closure. I can't imagine me wearing it closed though.




Burda WOF magazine: 12 -2008- 123
Quilted Fabric (polyester with dacron inner) : Global fabrics

pssst (Auckland blog buddies, Smart Dress Fabrics in Mt Albert has got quilted fabrics on special)

Burda 10-2008-116 blouson jacket

My favourite colour is copper. I found that out quite by chance. If you asked me, "what is your favourite colour?" I would have said, "blue."

Here's how I found out. When the place where I worked wanted to lay off a whole lot of staff, they brought in a "change management" consultant. 5 of us signed up for the workshop. One of the activities was to imagine yourself surrounded by a colour that made you feel warm, secure and alive. And what colour did I see? Copper! I think it's because it so closely resembles a well made cup of coffee. Anyway, funnily enough, not one of us 5 attendees actually got made redundant, but we all left within a year to follow a new path that we had planned out that day in the workshop.

It's not a colour that suits me, but I love it, which is why I didn't mind making up this blouson jacket to match my ugly skirt in it.

I super-burda-ed this time, with belt and buttonhole. I even had some nice wooden bracelets so I could uber-super-burda it but I forgot to put them on.

Now you can see "ugly" skirt on. It's a pencil skirt - I have now officially entered it into the contest. I was going to ask you all to take a vote, but really, when I first saw this fabric I thought it was absolutely hideous.

You just can't top that ... I knew in my hearts of hearts that this was my entry.