A quick jacket

A last project for this year. A review of McCall's pattern 5007 (now out of print) on Pattern Review reminded me of this pattern. This was one of the patterns I bought 2,5 years ago and with which I started sewing for myself again. I made it of a too red fabric and was not satisfied with the buttonholes. It hang in my closet for two years and finally threw it away a few months ago.

But it liked the pattern, so I decided to try to make it from a bouclé fabric I recently bought. It was a last piece of only 1,3 mtr of fabric (1,5 yard), so not very much to make a jacket of. I'm making the view as shown in the drawing in light green, only without the slit in the front. Due to the lack of fabric I have cut the facing for the front in several pieces, a real puzzle.

As the bouclé fabric ravels very easily, I first cut the pieces of fusible interfacing with large space around them, ironed those to the fabric and then cut out the pattern pieces. The picture shows a piece before cutting exactly.

For the collar there are two pattern pieces (for the upper and under collar). According to the instructions the undercollar must be cut on the fold, but I ignored that and cut it on the bias. To make sure that I didn't forget to cut a seam allowance, I pinned with the pins so that I had a clear reminder when cutting that this part was not to be cut exactly at the pattern piece. A trick I learned from a Threads dvd, which was kindly lent to me by a Dutch lady (thanks H.).

 

I marked the pieces with basing thread.

 

It really is an easy jacket, so I hope to finish it this weekend. This is a picture of the collar, topstitched and sewn together at the seam. You can see the amount of extra space that is in the upper collar. It seems a lot, but it's basted to the jacket at the moment (no picture yet), and it's the perfect amount of extra ease in the upper collar.