StyleArc – Marni jacket

Next up is another StyleArc jacket: the Marni jacket. also a pattern that I bought last year and hadn’t sewn up. I had made a muslin for the bodice, that I remembered but that was as far as I got. Pleasant surprise when I took out the pattern from my stash: I had already altered the pattern and did an fba on the front, which I had completely forgotten. It made life easier now, as I could directly start and cut the fabric.

It’s drafted very good, I made only one change: I added a back neck facing. In hindsight I should have added that to the Marie jacket too which is also a variation on a shawl collar. It was a long time since I made a shawl collar and with the Marie jacket I felt that it was difficult to finish neatly in the back neck area. Starting this jacket I took out the Vogue sewing book to lookup the instructions for a shawl collar and immediately saw that the problem was not having a back facing. Easy to add:

Mark the depth of the facing and mark the facing of the front in the shoulder seam. At the center back make the line a short line in a 90 degree angle to the center back.

Draft a smooth line from shoulder to center back seam.

Sew the shawl collar using this facing piece. Instructions can be found in most sewing books or google “sewing shawl collar”.

The result, I also played with the alphabet of my new (!) machine. More on that machine when I know it better.

During construction I understitched most of the collar.

Trimmed the corners of the cuff to prevent bulk.

And made it a bit smaller in the waist after the first fitting. Contrary to the instructions I interfaced half of the cuffs too. That’s the only minor detail that didn’t work so well: the cuff has a split and has to be turned up to get the effect of the line drawings 3/4 length sleeve.  That made the split stand out strangely. I solved it with tacking it together with a few hand stitches. no big deal. Do you think the cuffs were intended to turned up when you see the line drawing?

For now only dressform photos, I added bra cups but on the left side it’s sticking out a bit weird, of course I only saw the when I opened them on the computer.

I’ll show the jacket when I finished the skirt, this is the fabric for it. Will be a very simple pencil skirt. It has a bit of the color of the jacket in it.

StyleArc – Marie jacket

The first finished project for 2014 is a StyleArc pattern. I bought the pattern months ago and never got to making it. After my muslins and deciding to wait for the Ziggi motocycle jacket pattern I thought it was time to make this one up. Especially when I found this fabric in my stash (when looking for something else). I had totally forgotten about this fabric, think I bought it in New York in my 2010 trip, but not very sure.

The burn test showed me it is wool, it has mechanical stretch (the way it’s woven, the yarn has no stretch). I was fed up making muslins and took my chances (I did measure the pattern pieces). The yardage I had was not enough. After a little disappointment in that, I decided to continue and cut the upper side part off-grain. I also copied the front pattern and made it into two separate pieces. One part I cut from the fashion fabric, the other from lining. I also cut the back on the fold and the yoke with a seam. It was the only way to make this work with the amount of fabric I had.

I’m very happy with the result. It was greeted most enthousiastically by DD, who would like it for herself as well. Pity StyleArc patterns come in one size only.

Quite a windy afternoon, by now it’s pitch dark here and a thunderstorm is passing by.

In this photo you can see that the side seam is much more slanted than the line drawing suggests. I like it this time, but have been disappointed with the difference in line drawing and reality with this pattern company in another pattern.

The inside with the lining. Originally this should be one pattern piece, no lining involved.

The back is more flared than I thought it was. Perfect for my shape. I did add a few centimeters to the front side seam, but that’s all I changed in that area. The only other change I made was adding 2 cm to the sleeve length. No changes to the length, its style is quite long.