I’m still catching up on sewing show & tell. I finished this guy back in December but no pics until now. Sorry the color’s a bit off.

I bought the fabric last year on my first expedition to Mood Fabric, during which there was much hyperventilation, and simultaneous desires to buy everything and to run screaming from the store.

Thankfully my friend Chris was with me, and by repeatedly stopping and staring at each other and saying over and over “this is amayyyyzing” and “I’m overwhelmed” we made it through the experience. I walked out with this upholstery fabric (for a bag? for a jacket? we didn’t know) and the fabric for my first pair of pants.

The jacket pattern is from Burda magazine, a reissue/update of one of their 60s patterns. Since my shoulders are 2 sizes smaller than everything else on my body I decided it would be smart to make a muslin, which felt like a terribly professional approach and turned out to be really helpful.

Basically I made a mock-up of the jacket out of cheap muslin and then tried it on and fitted it by pinning and basting until it seemed to fit right. I then transferred the changes back to my paper pattern, unstitching where needed to get the fabric flat again. This is like making two whole garments, which does sound crazy, but since it prevented the final piece from being thrown to the floor and stomped on in grief and frustration I think it was time well spent, and has become my M.O.

This fabric is so busy that I decided to skip making the pockets. Also because pockets seemed like more than I could handle. As it was I spent an entire evening puzzling out how to cut the fabric so the pattern would kinda sorta match up across seam lines and openings. I ended up making the back sleeves out of two fabric sections since there just wasn’t enough yardage to cut out the whole pieces and get the fabric pattern placed right.

The jacket is lined, which yet again is like making a second (in this case third) entire jacket, with slightly different edges. But the lining is red, and silky, and makes my jacket look like a real jacket so I love it.

I’m pleased and a little surprised at how well the whole thing turned out.

Even though I saw this design store window while on vacation, complete with pillows in the same fabric – different colorway.

Apparently I’m not done with upholstering myself.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under sewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.