A last winter project?

First I would like to welcome my new followers. I’ve seen quite a lot new followers this week, through Bloglovin there are now 962 followers and 513 through Google/blogger. To me that’s a huge number and I appreciate all of you reading my blog. I had seen that I passed the 900 number of followers but now I’m close to a 1000. A lot of the new ones will have come here through Carolyn, who mentioned my blog in her favorite 10 sewing blogs. Thank you Carolyn, as I said in a comment on your blog post, I’m honoured to be in your top 10. Check out her post, I know most of the blogs she mentioned and follow them already. As I haven’t had much time in the past year or so to explore new blogs, I don’t really have new ones to share. There are a few blogs gone in these years that I miss, from ladies with extraordinary talent and creativity (thinking especially of LauraLo, Birgitte and Summerset).

And what am I working on? My moto cycle style jacket saga hasn’t come to an end yet. After having seen Sandra’s review on PR I was convinced the StyleArc Ziggi jacket was the pattern I needed. It looked more shaped than other patterns I made a muslin for.

My fabric, I have shown it before, a felted wool with a lace top layer. Quite warm so I think this will be my last real winter project. We had a very mild winter here, not a day with real frost and no snow at all! Quite a difference from a lot of places elsewhere in the world! The first spring bulbs are flowering here.

This was the unaltered muslin, sewn right from the envelope. Not good.It’s much too wide in the back and shouders and also the front is too wide at the waist. Again! After this I tried to change it and was not satisfied. Which made me decide I need professional help with fitting and I’ve signed up for a few sewing lessons, with the main focus on fit.

I had my first lesson last week and it was a positive experience to have a professional helping me with this. I do not have photos of the fitting she did,

you will have to wait for the jacket I’m working on. To be on the safe side and also because my fabric is a bit thick, I have cut wider seam allowances. Marking the seam lines on this fabric is an extra challenge. I usually do trace the seam lines with carbon paper, but it didn’t stick to the fabric. Then I basted the lines. Still the lines from the carbon paper were disappearing very easily while basing it and I had to put the paper pattern on it again to see where the seamline was.  The following experiment was with long machine stitches. Very clear but I’m afraid I can’t get all the stitches out without damaging the lace.

Then I decided to trim the seam allowances and mark with chalk. It looks like this holds better.
I will construct the jacket to check the fit once more. Hopefully the real construction can start after that. I plan to use piping as an accent. This is going to be a very time consuming project.