Inspiration retrospective #1

This is just to close the loop on my previously published grey wardrobe.

To reiterate, my latest jacket was based on New Look 6516.  It looks like the classic French Cardigan Jacket aka FCJ but was constructed using a not-quite-the-oft-promoted-classic-Chanel method:  the quilting attached the fashion fabric to an underlining, while the lining was inserted using the classic "bagged lining" technique.  However...  I took some time to examine the ins and outs of a large number of genuine Chanel cardigan jackets, and discovered that quite a few of them have a standard rather than the quilted lining. So "quilted lining" isn't necessarily the defining characteristic of all Chanel cardigan jackets.  Surprised?

How is mine one different from my previous FCJ's?  Well, let's just say it's furry with a fringe on top. For the allusion and the treat of a young Hugh Jackman in his early musical theatre days, see below:

 

Indeed, my jacket is fringed, and fringed, and then fringed some more.  After fringing the front, neckline, and all hems, I went back and made some more fringe for the upper armscye:  call me a masochist.  But, this little decorative conceit is often observed in true Chanel jackets, as in here:

and here:

and here:

And the theme of armscye decoration is also applied to merely braided trim, as in here:

here:

and here:

BTW, all photos come from my internet's image search engine.  I've no doubt you can find more examples if you beat the bushes of the internet for a bit.

In closing, here's a little forward looking inspiration from the incomparable Maison de Couture of which we speak:



Now THAT's some Tyrolean bling!

Rainbow jacket: finished!

Declaring a long project completed is a very satisfying moment.

 

I see a slight imperfection in the way the chain lays on the right pocket.  A couple of stitches ought to fix that.

Below is a close-up showing details of the trim: the yarns I threaded through the chain are quite varied. There were at least four different ones in each. I tried to match the predominant surrounding colours.  Now that I see them all together, the pocket trim seems a bit too blue to me. There are blue, green, and navy threads in there, yet the photo makes it appear very monochromatic.  I know it's all a matter of personal taste, yet a purple thread might improve matters and bring it closer to the sleeve trim.

And  on the live "dummy"; as my photographer remarked, the quality of the photos is limited by the subject matter :(

The pic above shows all that's wrong with hooks:  the jacket doesn't ever really close or stay closed.  I'm not crazy about hook closures.  I'll move those hooks inward and maybe that'll suppress the center front gaposis.

In my previous post, BeccaA asked why I included structured jacket techniques (chest shield, sleeve heads and shoulder pads) in a cardigan style jacket.  Hmmm.  First, I wanted to do the Chanel style quilting to an underlining to begin with.  The fact that I had no room for 1" seam allowances aided in that decision:  the classic cardigan method simply wasn't feasible here. Then, when the sleeve issues arose, I knew that sleeve heads would be necessary, so that dictated the other "structured" touches. And I like a structured jacket.  My red version, which has no shoulder pads or chest shield, feels slouchy and (perhaps because it's a little on the big side) sloppy.   But there's one more thing:  a question of self confidence.  I just wasn't sure that I'd have the patience to do all that piecemeal hand-sewing of the lining, nor that I could make it look good enough.  Really.  As it turned out, this jacket took a lot of hand work, so I now suspect I probably could manage to produce one using only the classic cardigan jacket method and see it through to the end.  

With sewing, there's always a next time! :))

Rainbow jacket: finishing touches

Once I solved the troublesome sleeve issues, the rest came together nicely. Here are just a few more construction details:

I added sew-in hair canvas chest shields, placed on the bias.  Since the FF was quilted, it was very easy to stitch the shields onto the quilting just inside the sewing allowance.  I had a little fun using up last bits from my bobbins, thus the different thread colours. The bottom of each shield is pinked and left free.

I added a rather large patch pocket to the left inside lining.  It has a pleat at the bottom - this prevents any contents from pooching out and dragging on the jacket itself.  

I added two patch pockets to the front.  Yes, really. Can you see them? I assure you they're there.

Patch pockets on lower fronts.

They're easier to spot from above, especially when pulled open.  I double-lined them, so that pocket contents wouldn't snag on the bouclé. The lining that's attached to the body is about 1 cm or 1/2" shorter than the pocket, to make it less obvious during wear.

Now you can see the pockets very well

I added sleeve heads made out of polyester quilting batting and foam shoulder pads.  The sleeve heads were really essential to filling out those enlarged sleeve caps, and went a very long way to smoothing out most if not all of their easing imperfections. 

I still haven't added closures to the front, and am yet to add any trim. The FF is bright enough by itself - yet trimming it up is de rigeur for the classic Chanel jacket. Should I or shouldn't I? I almost convinced myself to leave well enough alone, then came across this Crimes of Fashion (love the name) jacket, all blinged up. Oh yes, a little gold for my rainbow would really make it shine.  As it happened, I had just purchased a length of chain to weigh down the hem, so I tested the look: 

On one side the chain is simply laid on top of the garment.  On the other, I threaded a couple of the bouclé threads through the links.  

It's a subtle difference, yet like the second look better, it integrates the trim with the jacket.  What say you?  

I think I've enough bits and pieces left to pull enough threads for the job:  if I trim up the sleeves and pockets as well as the front, I'll need enough to thread 2.6 meters of chain.  Won't that be a perfect make-work project for an afternoon or two!

Rainbow jacket: troubles with sleeves

Building this jacket hasn't been completely smooth sailing.  I spent a good long time on discovering, and then slowly solving, sleeve problems.

First, once sewed together and body tested, the sleeves felt much too stiff and somewhat too tight.  The solution to that was not particularly difficult:  bit by bit, without disassembling the already-made sleeves, I cut away nearly all the quilting.

By the time I finished, the only little bit of blue underlining left on each sleeve was about 5 cm at the cuff, and what had already been caught in the vertical seams.  Those two lines of what remained in the last quilting lines after the rest was pinked away, in the pic above, were also removed.  I also re-stitched the back sleeve seam about 1/4" wider, adding 1/2" to the circumference.  Not necessary, but an uncomfortable garment is one that doesn't get worn, right?

The second sleeve problem was equally unanticipated and rather harder to solve.  Call me naive, but I was under the impression that if the fabric stripe or check of the body piece is matched to the undersleeve, it'll similarly match all the way along the sides and at the sleeve cap. In theory, it should.  In this case, if I'd used the single piece sleeve of NL6516, perhaps it would have.  But I used a sleeve from V7975, and as it turned out it was too shallow.   Here's how:

At left are the back body pieces.  I numbered the armscye blue stripes: there are four of them.  At right are the sleeve pieces, and the blue stripes for the back half of the sleeve's armscye curve are also numbered: there are only three. The fourth stripe needed for a proper fit is missing, and the sleeve cap is too flat and too short to fit in the body correctly.  Oh, I'm sure I could've stretched and strong armed it (pun intended!) into the armscye, but the stripes wouldn't have matched, it wouldn't have looked good, and it very likely wouldn't have felt good in wear.  So how did I solve this problem?  I increased the size of the sleeve cap.

I sewed a strip of fabric two blue stripes high just above stripe number two of the upper sleeve.  I had just enough small pieces of fabric left over to do that.  After that, I really winged it, tacking the sleeve in tiny little increments here and there at important match points, eventually sewing it in by hand with very small stitches, and only after it was all in to my satisfaction (not perfect, mind you, but acceptable!) I machine sewed the lot just inside the hand stitching, for security.  You can just see that horizontal seam in the sleeve above, it's in the purple-magenta stripe.

 After many days, the sleeves are finally in. I have learned my lesson!
I free-handed the cap increase in the lining, and pleated rather than eased the cap into the lining body.  I always pleat out the sleeve cap excess in my linings - it's easy, quick, and comes with no functional penalty.  How about you?

Here's where I diverge from the classic cardigan jacket construction: the lining is a standard one, with an ease pleat in the back and one side seam left open, and it'll be "bagged" into the jacket.    

The Rainbow jacket: early stages

For my second garment of 2014 I turned to a lovely little piece of colourful wool bouclé acquired a couple of years ago at Ottawa's fall Fabric Flea Market.  With its yellow, orange, red, light blue, violet, and navy, all it lacks is a bit of true green to make it a little piece of rainbow, and it shimmers like it, too.  The piece was small, so when I got it I was probably thinking of a skirt;  but when I laid it out, I thought, well, it just might be enough for a little jacket at that.  A rainbow Technicolor Dreamcoat sort of little jacket.

The piece was really small for a jacket:  42" wide by 53" long (110 x 135 cm).  That's too small to make anything with a collar or facing. Above, the two patterns lying in front of the little length of what is actually a very yummy and cheerful piece of wool hint at the direction I decided to take:  a "Chanel-style", aka, "French cardigan" jacket.  The upside of this kind is that it's lined to the edge:  what you see is all you need, in terms of the fashion fabric.  The downside is that, should you decide to follow the classic method, it's, ahem, just a tad time consuming.

Most of the time, to make the C-style jacket people choose either V7975 (at right in the photo above) or V8259 (the Claire Shaeffer's custom couture collection, reviewed on Pattern Review but no longer available for sale from Vogue).  Both have shoulder princess seams, but V7975 has a two-piece sleeve while V8259 has the classic vented three-piece sleeve, plus very detailed construction instructions.

Way back when, four years ago almost to the day, as part of my participation in "Go Chanel or Go Home", I made a very red boucle version using V7975. Live pics are linked via my pattern review here, though if you're not a member you likely won't be able to see them, as non-members are limited to only the past 6 months of reviews.  But they're also on the blog here.

So, how did that early red version stand the test of time? The jacket itself, pretty well, except.... The hooks I picked were of such appallingly bad quality that two broke off almost immediately.  I replaced them with a separating gold-coloured zipper that matches the exposed zipper of the skirt.  I still wear the jacket, usually with black slacks, although it really feels at least a size too big now - I probably made it a bit too big to begin with, and have dropped a size or two since. I considered unpicking the hem and taking it in, but my husband - aka the critical eye and voice of reason - objected, saying that there's nothing wrong with a loose-fitting jacket. He's right, right?  The matching red boucle skirt, I almost never wear.  Too much red all at once, I think.

Anyway, back to the project at hand.  Over time, I discovered that armscye princess patterns tend to yield a better fit for me than the shoulder princess.   Therefore, for this version I turned to New Look 6516, a pattern I'd used very long ago for a jacket I still love though it was an early and very flawed creation; despite that it's one that fits me better than any other I've made.

To cut to the chase, I tested the possibilities by laying pattern pieces on the folded fabric, then cut out underlining pieces out of lightweight cotton broadcloth, laid them out, and basted them onto the fabric.  Of course, with the very obvious check pattern, the aim was to have the lines match up across the body and sleeves.

Cotton quilting/underlining, basted onto fashion fabric.

Above's the layout.  The body pieces weren't difficult to place - basically, all body hems were placed on a blue check stripe and that was that.  Matching the sleeves was a bit trickier, and, I thought, as long as I match the undersleeve check to the side seam check, all would be well.  Right?  Well... yes... almost right. More on that later.

One little thing about NL6516 is that it has a single-piece "tube" sleeve. A tube sleeve would not have fit on this measly little scrap of fabric.  This is counter-intuitive, I know - a single-piece item should fit into a smaller area than two pieces - but in this case, the sleeve pieces had to share real estate with side back body pieces, and the ONLY way to make them play nice was to use a two-piece sleeve.  Which I did, using the sleeve of V7975.

In the Chanel construction technique, one is advised to cut out the FF (fashion fabric) pieces with 1" seam allowances before quilting, since bouclé can be of a very loose weave.  Obviously, such allowances were not within any realm of possibility here, so, to make things easier to handle under the machine needle, I cut the piece in half just below the hem line of the body pieces to the right, and quilted everything without cutting it all up into all the individual pattern pieces.

So far so good?  Yea.  The red bemberg lining at left is what I picked to go with it;  I'd thought of navy blue originally, but a good match wasn't available at the store, and my second attempt at dyeing the light grey lining I'd used for the navy velvet jacket failed utterly.  [And I think I know why:  it turns out that my mystery grey lining is acetate, a type of cellulose-based man-made fabric that's sufficiently different from rayon that dyeing it is not as straightforward. I dyed it a nice dark blue, then washed and dried it:  it returned to light grey.  Live and learn....].

After the quilting, I placed the tissue pattern piece on each quilted piece, adjusted orientation to match its lateral (left/right) mate, cut it out, and immediately serged all edges.  Probably a bit of overkill as this particular bouclé wasn't especially ravelly, but it safeguarded every little millimeter I had:  better safe than sorry!

Here's the result, ready for assembly:

Above, you can see that the body pieces are pattern-matched with respect to the hem line. The undersleeve placed at the centre is matched to the side seam lines of side front & side back. 

And the top sleeve pieces have their horizontal stripes matched to the stripes of the under sleeves.

Yea.  I do believe I'm going to get a jacket out of this little scrap of wool!!!!

Red "Chanel" suit: skating season!

The little hobble skirt will be perfect for a death spiral.



But not for triple axels or pirouettes.



More later!

Red "Chanel" Suit: Baby It's Cold Out There!

My laptop's still in the hospital, but the patient's expected to live. Or so I'm told.

In the meantime, I've managed to put my "what to do next" pondering time to good use. When I say I'm a stingy cutter, I mean it! I bought 2.25 yds of this here red boucle, and I managed to turn the scrap left over from the jacket into a matching skirt. Tadah! Here's my fuzzy little butt-warming outfit, and not a second too soon, considering the howling you-don't-want-to-know-the-windchill gale out there tonight. A lovely Arctic blast.

We're entering prime Rideau Canal (=longest skating rink in the world, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records) skating season. We need it to be cold. We LOVE the cold!

We know how to dress for the cold. So, the front:



Both top and bottom are underlined with organza, painstakingly stitched to the ff, and all four pockets have double silk lining, so you can slip your fingers into them without catching on the fuzzy boucle. The jacket's weighed down with a hem chain. And that's not all: altogether too much hand sewing, I tell ya. But it had to be done.

I'll post a "live" photo on the GCGH blog, and probably - I hope - review it on PR. Or maybe not. I'd rather be sewing than computing whilst on my own time, seeing as I spend pretty much all my time in front of an ugly square screen at work, and not watching sitcoms either. Bear with me.

I had JUST enough trim to do all that you see - with a 1 cm scrap left, I kid you not. As I didn't want the skirt to turn into just a great big boring red bottom, I did this:



A nice exposed heavy gold zipper all the way down. Maybe it'll tweak someone's imagination. I hope.

Is this all? No indeed. One of the sites I love to stalk is Style.com. Today I found Thimister - I know, I've never heard of him before either. But take a look. Did you? So, never mind the shoot'em up bloodstained clothing theme, what I did like about the collection is the fab-fabulous colour combination of drab olive with red and white. Eminently doable! Here's the jacket with the very first thing I ever reviewed on PR - a New Look skirt, and being a total newb back then, I never bothered to post the skirt I made (in olive microfibre):



I like the skirt enough to wear it regularly, and now I can feel fashion forward in it. A hooray moment?