A Larissa/Jasper Mash Up

A few weeks ago I made a muslin of the Larissa jacket.  Whilst I liked it, it had a few issues, mainly the fit across the front and the length.  Whilst I do like the length of that jacket for the jumper I was envisioning it needed to be longer.

So I took my Larissa pattern and then grabbed my Jasper sweater pattern that I really like the fit of and laid all the pieces out on my dining room table for a comparison.

I then started creating a new pattern which took the bests of both parts of these patterns with a few self drafted bits thrown in for good measure.

• The back piece is basically the jasper, but with the bottom cut to the curve of the Larissa and some extra length up top from the Larissa. (The Larissa moves the shoulder seam forward a bit which I like and wanted to keep)
• The side piece is taken directly from the Jasper - It had much more shaping than the Larissa allowing for a better fit.
• The front piece is Jasper with some length taken out at top, and then cut at the angles of the Larissa to get the asymmetrical zipper.  The neckline is from Larissa with a slight modification to make it more V necked.
• Neither the Jasper or Larissa sleeve seemed to work with all my other modifications so I redrafted the sleeve head from scratch and used the two piece Larissa sleeve from there down.
• I used all the little accessory pieces from Larissa, the elbow patches, shoulder tabs bottom band and band tabs and sleeve zippers.
• The collar was drafted from scratch to be a mandarin type collar that tapers to a V in the center front.

Once I had all my pattern modifications in place I was ready to get started.  I thought about doing another muslin, but then said bugger it I'm just going to use my good fabric - a sweat shirt type material, knit on one side and fleecy on the other  in a beautiful blue colour.

The sweater came together pretty easily though I did have to make a few modifications as I went along.  I had to take some width out of the front above the bust line, and I took 1" off the length of all the pieces.

Instead of doing the welt pocket specified on the Larissa,  I put the front zipper pockets into the front princess seams, which are much further forward than in the Larissa Jacket so are in a good place for pockets.

I also used a contrasting fabric in a number of places.  On the underside of all the tabs, inside the sleeve zippers and on the pocket bags etc.

The main issue I had stemmed from the fact that I didn't want to line this jacket.  The basic Larissa jacket is meant to be lined so the inside finishing details are not so great - especially on the sleeve zippers.  I left those as is and just have to deal with the extra bulk around my wrist, but around the neckline I made some bias tape out of my co-ordinating fabric and used that to finish off the neckline.

The zippers I used are all brass zippers and I used brass snaps on all the tabs.  Unfortunately I didn't have the right setting tool for the snaps and I was too impatient to wait till I got one so I just set them using a hammer and anvil and they're not great, maybe if they start falling off I'll buy the proper setting tool and re do them, but until then they're OK.

Whilst I love wearing this jacket there are a few small things that I really don't love. The bottom band seems to sit a bit funny - too much bulk and not wide enough, I still don't love the fit across the front.  And yet despite all these little issues it's still a great jumper.

Of course I've already managed to get it stained (but they didn't show up in the pictures so hopefully no one else can see them in real life either), but that wont stop me from wearing it.  I got a few wears in this season before it started warming up. but it'll probably go away till Autumn now.

Bring on the summer makes.