Satin Brocade Bomber Jacket

The idea for this jacket came about during the construction of my last two coats.  My Bias cut A line swing coat and my purple wonka coat I wanted those coats to be extra warm, but also have a nice smooth interior to make it easy to get on and off, so I used warm and natural batting and quilted it to some purple satin. I loved the way the quilted satin looked and decided I would love to make a whole coat with this look.  I wanted a shorter coat this time however decided on a bomber jacket style.  

Thus began my search for a bomber jacket pattern.   I thought about drafting my own, but I've been struggling a bit with how much ease to include in my coats and decided that I wanted a pattern to follow for this project.  There were two patterns that I've seen around the blogoshere lately that I've loved.  Papercut Patterns  Rigel Bomber and Waffle Patterns Zipper Blouson- Cookie.  However I am more than a little close fisted and the price on these two patterns was a bit steep for me so I went looking for something a little closer to my price range and found the BurdaStyle Plaid Bomber Jacket.  This had pretty much everything I was looking for - raglan sleeves, good collar and only $6 - so I bought the pdf version and printed it out.  

This was my first time working with a Burdastyle pdf pattern.  They don't give you much in the way of instructions, but since its a pretty easy style I wasn't too worried. It was also my first time using a pattern without seam allowances.  This is not a good thing for me as I'm too lazy to actually mark the proper seam allowances so they tend to wobble a bit as I cut them by hand.

Next up I had to figure out what size to use.  The pattern came in size 36, 38, 40 and 42. According to my measurements I'm a size 40 for high bust and above 44 for waist however after measuring the pattern and comparing it to my actual measurements I decided to cut a straight size 36 - There is a lot of ease in this pattern.  

So the next thing I had to do was decide on material - This was easy.  During one of my many trips to the discount fabric store I found on the $1.99/yard table this fantastic green satin.  It has the most beautiful lustre to it - I just had to have it.  

But I figured it might be a bit much to make the entire thing from it.....so bring on the satin brocade fabrics.  I love these types of fabrics but never get a chance to use them.  I mainly make everyday type clothes and its not really an everyday material is it?  However I figured that it would make a great feature on this jacket.  I chose a cream base colour as it was the best match for the green - plus phoenixes and dragons how can you go past that!

I originally bought enough of the green material so I could line it in the same colour, however I then went and used up a good chunk of the material during the Pattern Review Sewing Bee. About halfway through the Bias challenge in round 2 I had a crisis of confidence.  I wasn't sure that my coat was "Bias" enough to meet the challenge and so I decided I would make a satin dress instead.  Unfortunately the pattern I chose did not work well when I tried to extend it to my size and after spending a day and a half trying to make it work I gave up entirely and moved on to attempt no.3.  I spent half a day on that before once again giving up and going back to my original idea.   One day I'll go back and try and finish those two dresses....one day....

Thankfully, by cutting up the skirt of the dress I still had enough of the green fabric to make my bomber jacket.  I cut the front and sleeve pieces out of the green satin and the back piece out of the brocade fabric, then cut all pieces out of the warm and natural batting material.  Then came the tedious job of quilting the two layers together.  Every other time I've quilted something it was for a lining and if there was a few puckers here or there I wasn't really worried.  This time I was trying for perfection - I didn't achieve it of course, but I did a pretty damn good job! I then sewed all the pieces together and trimmed the batting away from the seam allowances.  I have to say that that was my least favourite job of this entire make...so tedious.

Once it was together I had to think about what I wanted to do with the inside of the jacket.  I couldn't leave it as it was with the batting showing.

After a little more thought I decided that I wanted to make the entire thing reversible.  I didn't have enough of the green left so I headed back to the store - I knew that there was another piece of the green there, but then I noticed this purple material and knew i had to go with that instead. 

I only bought 1 yard as I knew that was all I needed, however once I got my fabric home I noticed that there was an entire corner missing from my yard and no matter how I laid out my pattern pieces I could not get all my pattern pieces out.  I thought about using the last little bits of the cream brocade, but there wasn't quite enough of it to do an entire piece.

However the burda pattern does include a yoke line on the back piece.  I had ignored it up until now, but now I decided that I could use that line and do the top half in the brocade and the bottom in the purple.  

Unfortunately It wasn't quite enough to make my pattern layout work so I needed another solution.  What I came up with was to combine the two sleeve pieces.  The Burda pattern comes with two pattern pieces for the sleeve with a seam up the outside of the arm curving around the shoulder.  If I joined the two pattern pieces along the straight edge of the arm, creating a dart at the shoulder I could get everything to fit.  so this is what I did.

Once again I cut all the pattern pieces out of the warm and natural batting and quilted it all together.  So now I had two separate jackets and had to figure out how to join them together.

My local discount fabric store didn't have any knit ribbing in any colour that would be useful to me so I took a trip to the more expensive fabric store.  Unfortunately they didn't have much either.  The only thing that I found was a pretty flimsy knit in either a cream colour with a tinge of green or in a purple.  I decided to go with the purple, but since the ribbing was soooo flimsy I bought a bit of knit interfacing as well hoping that I could use that to stiffen it up some.

I played around with using two layers on the knit, or using the knit and the interfacing and decided the knit by itseld, even with a double layer was not stiff enough so went with the knit plus interfacing. I cut out the collar, cuffs and hem band and sewed it onto the green layer and then sewed in the purple layer as you would bag a lining.  I got it all done...and hated it.  It looked terrible - the ribbing was all stretched out and wrinkly.

It was at this point that I remembered a piece of material that I had bought quite some time ago.  A heavy knit material in purple.  I went to my stash and dug around till I could find it....and lo and behold it was in fact a knit rib...a much heavier weight knit rib.   So I got out my unpicker and took the entire coat apart.  I re-cut the collar, cuffs and hem band in the heavier weight material, and then ripped all the interfacing off the light weight ribbing and used that ribbing as a sort of underlining just to make sure there were no issues.  

As one of the things I really struggled with first time around was attaching the cuffs to the sleeves, and since the sleeves felt really bulky I decided that whilst I had the whole thing apart I would trim down the width of the sleeve.  I tapered the under sleeve seam from nothing at the underarm to about 1.25" at the cuff.  This made the sleeve much more comfortable, but also made it a lot easier to attach the cuffs.

And so I re attached the collar, cuffs and hem band as described previously.

This just left the front of the coat to finish with the zipper.  I was lucky that the more expensive fabric store stocked reversible zippers in the length I needed, and was thrilled to find that they were a beautiful gold metal zip - that matched my jacket perfectly.

I sewed the zipper onto the green layer and then the purple layer was top stitched in place over it.

And we have a fully reversible bomber jacket in various shade of green and purple.

I love this coat.  With the two layers of quilting it is so warm.  I am a frog and I would be happy to wear my winter coat from the moment it starts cooling down, but I always feel a little silly in a full length coat in September.  This coat has all the warmth of my winter coat but in a much more autumn looking jacket.  I've worn it just about every day since I finished it.

The only thing that I would change were to I make this coat again would be the length of both the body and the sleeves.  I'm short, but at the size 36 the sleeves of this really ride up my arms if I reach forward.  I could also do with some extra length in the body as most of the time the coat doesn't cover whatever shirt I'm wearing.

Grey Plaid fleecy cowl dress

Wow there's a description for you.  How many words can you use to describe one dress.

This piece of fabric has been sitting in my stash since last winter.  I picked it up on a whim one shopping trip because it was just sooooo snuggly.  It's not your standard fleece, but something much softer and just so snuggly - microfibre fleece?  Its basically pajama fabric, but I didn't want to waste this on pajamas, I wanted to try and use it in some way that it could be worn out of the house.

At the time of purchase I didn't know what I was going to so with it, then yesterday inspiration hit.  I wanted to make one of those cosy looking fall dresses that I see around so often - you know the type you would wear with leggings and long boots.  Can you just imagine getting up on a cold fall morning and throwing on this pajama worthy dress and being all snuggly and warm.  Well I can now because that's exactly what I did this morning.

So I had a picture in my head of what I wanted - I was thinking simple knit dress with long sleeves and a cowl neck, and miracle of miracles, going through my pattern stash, I found the perfect pattern. Simplicity 1716.

This is one of the patterns that I picked up at a garage sale last winter at $3 for a box of patterns.

So the only problem - as usual - was what size to cut.  I decided to make it easy on myself and cut the entire thing out at the maximum size 20 and then took it in from there.  I sewed most of the seams with about a 1" seam allowance, the back fit pretty well doing that but I had to make a number of adjustments to the cowl at the front, cutting it down to a size 12/14 across the shoulders.  The sides seams had to be taken in quite a bit.    Once I had the fit to what I wanted I trimmed all the seam allowances off to 3/8 inch and then took the entire thing apart (I'd just sewn it with basting stitches). I compared the newly cut pieces with the pattern and found that the sleeves were down to about a 12, the shoulders to a 12/14, the arm scythes around a 12 as well, and the side seams graded from a 12 under the arm to the original 20 at the hem.  I'd be tempted to cut the entire thing at a 12 if I were to make it again - although only with another fabric that has as much stretch as this one.

After making sure everything was still symmetrical (requiring a little more re-trimming) I sewed the entire then together properly.  I didn't bother with any seam finishing on the inside as this material doesn't fray at all.  I did however use that plastic elastic tape stuff (is that the technical name for it) around the back neckline to ensure that it doesn't stretch out of shape with the weight of the cowl.

I did pretty well matching the plaids horizontally, though there are a few issues with the vertical matching especially down center back.  Still who's going to care except me.

My one and only issue with this dress is that it has a tendency to slip backwards off my shoulders.  I'm not entirely sure what I can do about that - I was hoping that the stay tape at the back neckline would take care of it, but it didn't.

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep this dress as is, or if I need to re-cut the front some how - I've found that when I wear it I find myself re adjusting it time and time again which I really hate....but it's just so snuggly and warm I can't help wearing it anyway.

Pattern Review Sewing Bee Round 3 - Colette Rue

Well the good news is that I got through to round 3 of the Sewing Bee.

The challenge for round 3 was to make a garment using the pattern provided.  The pattern that they provided was Collette's Rue dress. 

I have to say that when I first saw this dress I wasn't overly thrilled - its really not my usual style - apart from the fact that I very rarely wear nice dresses I wasn't sure how easy it would be to fit that bodice,  But I decided to embrace the challenge.  I have been wanting to sew a winter going out dress for a while that I could wear to birthday dinners etc so decided that I would use this as the dress.

The day that I found out what the challenge was was also the day of the Pattern Review Boston area Meet-up.  This was being held at Pin Tuck & Purl a fabric and wool store in Exeter NH which is a good 2 hour drive away, so I wasn't sure if I was going to go.  I decided that it might be a good idea to go and check out their fabric selection as I knew I had nothing in my stash that would work, and I'm glad I did.  I spent the drive up thinking about what I wanted to do with this pattern and I had decided that I wanted to use two contrasting fabrics to really show off the design lines in the bodice.  Browsing around the store I found two fantastic fabrics from Cotton + Steel.  The first was a aqua blue cotton fabric with metallic sliver sardines embossed on it. 

 And the second was a linen cotton fabric in a neutral beige colour with styalised maps of the big cities of the world on it.  The colour in the maps matched the aqua colour of the sardine fabric so they went together beautifully.

With my fabrics in hand and a plan of attack mapped out in my mind I went home that night and downloaded my PDF pattern and printed out all the pages and taped them together.  I decided to go with version 1 of the pattern with the pleated skirt and longer sleeves.

According to the pattern, my measurements  fall between size 10-12 for bust,  at size 14 for waist and between 10 and 12 for hips. I decided to cut a straight size 14 to start and then trim down as required.

I used an old sheet to cut out a muslin for the 3 bodice pieces - back, lower front and upper front.  I sewed it up to the straight size 14 and found that it fit almost perfectly in length with my bust point sitting right where it is meant to according to the sew along. The fit at the waist was good, but there was a lot of excess fabric everywhere else. to reduce this I:

• Took 1/2" out of the center back seam, this brought in the neckline at the back as well as removing some of the excess fabric across my back. 
• Extended the back dart right up into the neckline tapering from the specified dart legs at the bottom of the bodice down to 1/4" at the neckline.
• On the front, I pinched out darts from either side of the neckline to the bust point to remove excess fabric and bring the shoulders in.
• Pinched out a dart in the middle of the arm scyth, also tapering to the bust point. 
• Pinched out about 3/4" of the lower bust piece along the front curve to get the material to curve under my breasts. 
• Moved the shoulder seam back by about 5/8" and tapered it slightly so that it sat on the top of my shoulder.

I then trimmed all my seams back to 5/8" and took the pattern pieces apart, leaving all the additional darts intact and modified my pattern pieces to account for these changes.

I was then able to start my second muslin.

 

For this I re-cut my bodice from the old sheet again, using my new pattern pieces, plus also cut the sleeves and skirt to test those. Again I started with a size 14 for each of these.

I had no problems with the skirt and made no changes for fit apart from removing 5" at the lengthen shorten line so that the skirt came up to just below knee length. 

With regards to the sleeve, I:

• Lowered the entire arm scythe by about 3/4" 
• Scooped out the front curve of the arm scythe by at least 5/8". 
• Scooped out a corresponding amount of the front sleeve head.
• Measured the new length of the arm holes and compared it to the length of the sleeve head curve and decided to go with a size 12 at the front of the sleeve and a size 10 at the back. I then tapered the sleeve to get a closer fit ending in a size 8 at the cuff. 
• Extended the length of the sleeve by 5" to make it a full length sleeve.

Once I was happy with the fit of the dress I turned to design. I went back to the fabric store and bought two cheap fabrics in similar colours and weights to my planned final fabrics and sewed together the bodice using these fabrics.  The back and upper front in a blue cotton fabric and the lower front in a neutral canvas material.  For the skirt I wanted the blue fabric for the majority of the skirt and the back of each pleat to be lined in the canvas fabric.  

In order to do this I had to modify the skirt pattern pieces. Each skirt pattern piece was split into 2 to remove the section of skirt that would normally be the back of the pleat. I then added a seam allowance back onto these edges. Separate pattern pieces were created for the back of the pleat consisting of the section of the original pattern plus seam allowance either side.

I cut and sewed the skirt using the two trial fabrics as well as the sewing in the sleeves in the main blue fabric.

I decided that the dress needed some more embellishment and played around with a number of different options for changing up the sleeve before settling on the sleeve cuff and placket idea so I drafted those pattern pieces and modified my sleeves accordingly. I still wasn't happy with it and after much deliberation I decided on adding the stripe down the sleeve. I modified my sleeve pattern pieces accordingly and then took one sleeve apart entirely and remade it to test the design.

Once I had this third muslin finished, I decided that I didn't like the placement of the fabrics on the bodice and that I wanted to swap the fabrics around. I originally had the blue cotton on the top of the bodice and the neutral canvas on the bottom of the bodice. In order to test the idea of swapping the materials I took a photo of myself wearing the muslin then took close up pictures of my two fabrics, after printing these photos I cut the fabric photos up and played dress up doll with the picture of the muslin. When I was happy with the new material placements I went ahead and laid out and cut my final pattern pieces. 

I sewed together the shell of my dress in my main fabric following the instructions in the pattern with the addition of a few extra seams to insert the pleat material into the skirt pieces. 

I made a number of other small adjustments as I was making my final dress, trying on the dress and then tapering a seam by 1/8" here or there just to perfect the fit for my body.

This dress is designed to be fully lined.  I decided that if I was going to line the dress I may as well make it reversible.  I found a super soft cotton lawn material with a pink/teal paisley/leopard print and cut out and sewed an second version of the dress (including pockets).  

I followed the pattern instructions for putting the shell and lining together and inserting the invizible zip.

When it came to the sleeves I laid the shell sleeve (consisting of the two blue pieces with the strip of map fabric down the center) and the lining sleeve on top of each other wrong sides together and treated it as a single piece whilst putting in the sleeve placket. I then sewed the outer sleeve together as normal and the lining together, and turned them inside right as one unit and sewed on the cuff. 

I'm super impressed with how these cuffs came out - I really took my time and made sure they were perfectly lined up both inside and out.

Finally I sewed the sleeves into the dress using the instructions in the pattern for the lined sleeve.

The hem of both the shell and lining were finished with a rolled hem on the serger and then the outer fabric was turned under an additional 1/8" to create a clean finish on the bottom of the skirt without any extra weight.

Pockets were included in both layers of the dress - you have to love a dress with good pockets.  I do find that these pockets are set back a little bit too far, but still....pockets!

There was a lot of contention about the drafting of this pattern, but personally I didn't find it that bad - I must have a shape close to the one that this pattern was drafted for.  Whist I don't love the darts over the bust I didn't find the curved shape under the bust as hard to fit as I expected.

Once the dress was finished I was in love - I love the way this dress fits - I love both the outer and inner fabrics I love everything about this.....unfortunately it did not get me through to the next round of the competition,  but I do have my consolation prize - a fantastic new dress!