Jacket with White Satin Trim Part 2

Last week, I talked about the decorative trim for a jacket that I am making.  This week, we see how the jacket went together.

I started with Vogue 1493.

The home made bias tape isn't just used for trim.  The seams are bound with the bias tape, rather than finishing them with an overcast stitch.

The sleeves have an usual shape, with the large and ornamented lower sleeves.  The seam comes to a sharp point.

This seam is made possible by clipping the upper sleeve almost to the seam line.

Here's the completed sleeve.

The upper part of the sleeve is a fairly standard shape, so it sews easily to the jacket.

The front band also proved to be fairly easy to attach.

The final step is to make 1" bias tape and attach it at the front band/front seam.  It turns out that 1" bias tape is more difficult to deal with than the 1/2" variety.  Also, if you try to feed a strip that's too wide into the bias tape maker, the fabric can end up melted (it is polyester) and ruined.  The stuff is squirrelly when you try to attach it also, note all of the pins.

The jacket did get finished.  Now I have something to wear to the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra concert!

Come back next week for a report from the Houston International Quilt Expo.

Jacket with White Satin Trim Part 1

Were you wondering about all the white satin trim from a previous post?
I saw this interesting jacket, Vogue 1493, and saw that it made use of some techniques I hadn't tried before. I decided to see if I could make it work.  Note that this is listed as an "advanced" difficulty pattern, a good sign that there's one or more steps here that is challenging to make work right.

   I choose a teal stretch denim for the jacket and white satin for the trim.  That gives a lot more contrast that the colors of the jacket on the front of the pattern envelope, but then, subtle isn't really my style.

Thank goodness I had extra fabric!  I think it came off the end of the bolt.  I made enough cutting errors that I had to redo some things and I ended up needing all the fabric I had.

As described in a previous post, making the white satin trim proved to be the difficult step.  The satin is made into 1/2" bias tape and then sewn to the lower sleeve sections and the front band in a pattern that looks random.

The pattern gives very detailed instructions for making the "random" design of lines of trim.  In this sleeve section, I've traced the lines from the pattern.  The pattern also specifies the order in which the lines of trim are to be sewn.  The right and left sleeves are different, as are the right and left front bands.

Sewing on the white trim proved to be fairly straight forward.  It did involve a great deal of top stitching.  Here's a lower sleeve section in process.

 

The front bands were easier than the sleeves.  There were just and many lines of trim, but most of them were shorter.  Here's the front band, lined with more white satin, ready to be sewn onto the jacket.

Come back next week and see how the jacket goes together, now that most of the trim is done.

Jacket, Part 2

Last week, I talked about the first work on a new jacket.  This week, I'll show you how it turned out.

 At the end of last week's post, I had basted together the shell of the jacket and found that it fit.  I also decided that it was too plain, so I'd planned to add metallic rick rack.

The next step of the project was to completely take the jacket apart, then reassemble it with proper seams.

After that, I added the rickrack around the edges of the jacket and also around the bottoms of the sleeves.  This has to be added before the lining is attached.  Normally, trim is attached with a thread that matches the trim.  I have some metallic embroidery thread nearly the same color as the rick rack.

While using this thread made the stitching nearly invisible, sewing through the trim tended to shred the thread.  I had to stop and fix problems with the thread many times.

The next step is to construct the lining.  I was planning on using a very standard lining material for the jacket, but decided that something with some stretch would be better.  I had this heavy weight, stretch material left over from another project and constructed the lining from it.

After sewing together the lining and jacket at the front and neck, all that was left was a lot of handwork with hems and of course, adding the button.

Now I have a sharp looking jacket that's surprisingly heavy, mostly due to the lining.  This will be just the thing for those blustery days to come.

Come back next week and find out what's up for Halloween.  No ghouls here, just a cute costume for a little girl.

Jacket, Part 1

It's September and time to start thinking about clothes for cooler weather.  A great transition piece is a simple jacket.  I was thinking of something a bit dressier than my fleece jackets from my Fun With Fleece project.

I chose Butterick 6493 for the pattern.  This unusual jacket has raglan sleeves and princess seams.  The idea was that this combination would make fitting the jacket easier.  It's also got separate pattern pieces for people with different cup sizes, which is a real plus for those of us who are a bit more flat chested than average.

I chose a peacock blue stretch denim for the jacket.  This material is very easy to work with, as I found out with a previous project.  It's also not particularly expensive, which is a real plus when you aren't completely sure how something is going to work out.

After making a bunch of measurements, I decided to make only minor modifications to the pattern, shortening it a bit at the waist.

Now it is time to lay out the pattern.  I noticed that the fabric was only 57" wide, not 60" and has wide selvages, too.  I decided to buy a little extra fabric.  Good choice, as it turned out.

This jacket requires both interfacing and a lining.  The lining is a standard lining fabric.  For the fusible interfacing, I chose this knit product.  It's great for suiting.

The interfacing pieces are first cut with the pattern, then trimmed by 1/2", so that they are just inside the seam lines.  Here's the piece, just ready to fuse.

The pattern has a loop and button closure.  That gets started early in the construction process, too.  It will end up in the seam between the jacket and the lining and be in the right place at the end.

I wasn't really sure if I had the pattern sorted out, so I decided to baste the jacket together instead of doing all the seams the right way.  Normally, you wouldn't include the sleeves, but with this design the shoulder seams are on the sleeves, so all of the jacket pieces needed to be included.

I do my basting with contrasting color thread, to make it easier to remove.  It's a great way to use up odd bobbins of thread.

Now the jacket is basted and except for extra long sleeves, it fits.  The problem is that it seems to be excessively plain.  There's a lot of ways to deal with that problem, including embroidery, but for this project, I think some metallic rick rack will dress it up nicely.

I chose the rick rack because it does a really nice job of following curves, more than a lot of other trims.  I want it to follow the neckline, front, and hem.  That's a lot of curves.

Come back next week to find out how this project turns out!  There's lots more projects on my list, including something for Halloween.

Suit for a Wedding

It's challenging to figure out what to wear for important family events.   Add in an outdoor event, uncertain weather conditions, and a bride determined to have a very different wedding and it becomes almost impossible.

I decided that pants and sensible shoes would be most appropriate, given the outdoor venue and uneven ground.  The weather considerations made layering a really good plan.

I decided to make a matching jacket and pants.  I found this lovely green stretch denim material.  It's slightly shiny, like a cotton sateen.  It's not a traditional choice for formal wear, but it works well and fits nicely.

The jacket is a McCall's pattern, now out of print.  I modified it to fit me. 

It has this lovely embellishment, achieved with ribbon sewn to the fabric and topped off with buttons.  I chose buttons with sunbursts because I do like sunshine.

For the pants, I used my standby jeans pattern.  Again, it's not traditional, but I knew that the pants would fit.    The jacket is funky enough that it needs to be paired with something more than standard dress pants anyway.

The pockets of the jeans were decorated with this lovely one color design from Embroidery Library.  The one color design keeps is slightly understated and the jellyfish design speaks to my love of the ocean and scuba diving.

The suit was a smashing success and I use it as my go-to formal outfit for winter events.  It was perfect for the wonderful concert by the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra last weekend.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine.

Wrap Dress with Applique

Last Sunday was Easter and that's a day when a lot of lovely dresses come out of the closet.  It was no exception for me.  I didn't make a new dress, but wore one originally made for an event last summer.

The dress started out as Simplicity 8137, a simple wrap dress.   I didn't like the sleeve, so I changed it out for a flutter sleeve -- a very full, short sleeve.  I also had to modify the dress to fit me.

 The dress is made of polyester-cotton broadcloth, which has very little stretch, so proper fitting is required.  This material has a couple of advantages for this project.  First, it's quite inexpensive and when a dress requires 5 yards of fabric, that starts to matter.  Also, it's a perfect material for embroidery and applique, something like the island inspired skirts I've been making. 

This dress is something of a mixed technique project.  It includes machine applique, hand guided applique and decorative stitching.  The basic design is a flowering vine that accents the main features of the dress, curling along the front and neck openings.  The vine itself is far to big for machine applique, so it's hand guided applique.  The skirt section and the top section of the vine are each a single piece of fabric, bonded to the blue fabric and then stitched with a close spaced zig-zag stitch.

The leaves and flowers are machine applique with embroidered accents.  Both designs are from Embroidery Library.  The leaf is here and the flower is here.  The colors for the flower were chosen to contrast nicely with the blue and the green and also to go with a bracelet I wanted to wear with the dress, which has lapis lazuli, peridot, and garnet.   Each of the leaves and flowers were individually placed.  The leaves have stems.  The flowers do not, so I added those before placing the flowers.

Finally, I added decorative stitching to the hem of the dress and the sleeves.  It's a built in decorative stitch on my machine.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine.

Fun With Fleece Part 3

Fleece has been largely confined to active wear and casual attire.  I decided to experiment and see if it would work in a more formal setting.

I made this jacket with Kwik Sew 664 (out of print).  The pattern suggests fleece as one of the possible fabrics to use.  I chose black to make it more formal and to use metallic thread embroidery to enhance the idea that it's a formal garment.

The jacket has raglan sleeves.  The challenge was to create a design that was the right shape for each half of the sleeves, so that the sleeves could be embroidered before the sleeve seams were sown.

I started with an Embroidery Library design.  The design was not the right shape, but I figured that I could use an editor to move the stars around to get the right shape.  I ended up going to a friend's house and working with Floriani Total Control for the first time.  I did get the stars moved into a suitable shape and started thinking about buying digitizing software for myself.

Does the jacket work as formal wear?  There are limits. I would wear it for a nice night on the town, like to the Huntsville Symphony, but not to a really formal, wear a long dress, kind of event.  In the climate of Northern Alabama, fleece makes sense most of the winter and wool isn't really necessary.  This sort of jacket works well.  In a colder, wetter climate, I'd choose wool.

Flower Girl Dress

It's the time of year when brides are planning for spring weddings.  A friend asked me to modify a flower girl dress for her wedding.  The nice part is that there was an available dress that fits the flower girl and is pleasing to the bride, the flower girl, and her mother.  The original version of the dress was decorated with pink flowers.  The bride's color is purple, in all shades.  The dress required a redo to change from pink to purple.

The dress consists of two pieces, a sleeveless dress and a tulle overskirt.

The first modification to the dress was to remove the green ribbon at the hem and replace it with purple.  The second modification was to change the flowers on the bodice.

The original pink rosebuds came off easily. I was considering several options for replacement, including embroidered organza.  However, a friend I took to the fabric store found this great trim.  The flowers are about the right size and color.  After cutting them apart, I hand sewed them to the bodice.

The overskirt has two layers of tulle, with silk flower petals between the layers.  I opened the side seam and replace the pink flower petals with purple ones.

The original petals were held in place with hot glue on the back side.  I used the same method and placed the petals at the exact same locations as the originals, to hide the spots of old glue.

Finally, the ribbon tie for the overskirt was replaced by a purple ribbon. Now the lightly used flower girl dress is ready to go and has a new mission.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine.