#jasika

I’ve made two of these blazers since then, but this post will be about the first one (I’m still in recovery mode for blazer number 2).

              All of the materials were stashed for this first blazer, but that also means that a lot of different fabrics went into it. Six in fact. Six fabrics.

1 – Navy blue twill that makes up the bulk of the jacket. I think it’s polyester, and it’s pretty heavy.

2 – Green cotton, possibly flannel for the side panels

3 – Green velvet, which later became crushed for the collar and lapels

4 – Navy blue brushed twill for the bottom sleeves… Because of an interfacing error the original twill pieces became unusable. So I cut more out of the only navy blue twill I had left!

5 – Light blue lining with painted blobs, otherwise known as the only lining fabric in my currently limited selection I could get the back pieces out of.

6 – Turquoise/green lining, because it almost kind of matches. Not really. But kind of.

                      But before I cut into the fabric I made a muslin. For the muslin, I cut out size 12, with the C cup FBA pattern piece for the front, I think. Size 12 was good, but in ultimate hindsight (one muslin and two makes in) I think I’m probably halfway between the normal pattern and the FBA pattern, and should consider dealing with that next time… If I need a next time.

When I tried on the muslin, though,  I realized that I needed to take in the side seams a little, since I’m a petite person and the side seams were doing nothing for me. I also removed about two inches of length from the body and sleeves, and could probably stand to remove more. And finally, I did a swayback adjustment, which ultimately was successful on the outer, but less on the lining. Now that I’ve stepped back, that segment of the lining caused problems solely because of improper adjusting of the lining piece. But the altered muslin did look pretty good!

In making the garment, I did want to do it all from stash, so I did cheat a little and used a double layer of lightweight fusible in place of the hair canvas… Looking back, I don’t know how much of a difference it is. It is definitely stiffer than my hair canvas shoulders on v2, but not super stiff.

                  I ended up doing a lot of hand sewing in this garment because of sheer determination and lack of willingness to see stuff on the right side of the jacket. Like with the lapel easing… You are very unlikely to see the underside of the lapel, but I decided to hand sew the required ribbon in anyway because what happens if my machine spits out a threadball… Then I’d have to unpick it and hand sew it anyway, right?

(In hindsight, I still think this is fair, but also it was a bit fussy.)

Then I found out that the marker I had used to mark most of the front was waterbased, and that steaming would smudge it. Silly Jess. I only have white chalk at the moment, because most of what I sew is dark or colors, but the interfacing I had for the fronts was a light grey, so I needed to mark it with something darker. Luckily for me the actual jacket front pieces were navy, so the red smudges would never show through, but it was a good lesson to learn.

Let’s not talk about pocket 2…

Sewing the welt pockets was fun, to a degree. I’m not a precision sewist, so I wasn’t sure how it’d go, but I just jumped in and went for it.

For the record, I’ve done double welt buttonholes before, so I felt pretty confident going into it. Thank you coat that I’ve rarely worn because NC is too warm for it!

                              And then after the welt pocket, it was basically smooth sailing! I have pictures for before and after the collar/lapel insertion, and then the finished garment! I definitely remember completing the lining in one sitting, in maybe 4 hours tops (from cutting to assembling to break to sewing in with very careful detail to the instructions).

          I made my own shoulder pads and sleeveheads out of cotton batting from my quilting stash (hip hip hooray for stash!),  and because I have what I consider very sloping shoulders, I made them extra big. I don’t think it looks like 80’s shoulders big, so I’m not worrying about it, but just to bring it up: very sloping shoulders may need to adjust somehow…

            And yeah, I think that’s it. It was a worthy garment to make, and really boosted my skillset. Plus… very soft velvet lapels/collar.

Sadly it’s too warm for NC, which started believing it was summer in mid April, so I’ll have to give this blazer a second opinion in fall.