Midnight blue velvet jacket: done!

I truly enjoyed constructing this item from the start: pattern planning and adjusting, to its finish: planning the wardrobe pieces to go with it. I'm happy to have added another pattern to my go-to pile, and a bit of experience on that particular type of collar.

NL6013 with silk twill that could be a perfectly matching dress. Instead of a fashion fabric belt loop, I made a concealed thread loop to button up the fronts, on the rare occasions I'll wish to do so.   

Since I have more time right now than normally, I had some fun adding details not in the NL6013 pattern. On the front, I added angled double welt flap pockets and a single welt breast pocket.  Does it reflect my inspiration? Reasonably well, I believe.

To the back I added a double half-belt and buttoned sleeve vents.  Nice?  I think so.

I also took the time to give the invisible portions a little oomph.  Not only did I interface the under collar with fusible tailoring, but I also added a softer knit-based fusible to the fronts and side fronts, facings and upper collar.

Jacket body, inside out.  All fronts are fused with knit fusible, under collar with tailoring fusible.  The pockets and their pocket bags are already completed.

I also fused the sleeve and jacket hem.  Because I didn't want the velvet to rumple like a bathrobe, I added cotton half-underlining aka backstay to the upper parts of the back and side backs.   

Jacket, complete and ready for lining.  I used quilting batting for sleeve heads. Sleeve and hem are tentatively turned up. 

The lining and facing, ready to be combined with the outer jacket.  

As you can no doubt deduce, I constructed the lining (plus self-drafted back neck facing) and upper collar as a whole, and then combined this with the jacket by (almost) bagging the lining: actually I sewed the collars and front facings in one go, then the back hem to back lining as a separate seam.  Because the sleeve hems were already turned up, attaching the lining by machine at the sleeve hems wasn't really feasible, so I did that by hand.  I also pick-stitched around all the edges:  fronts, collar, hem, and sleeve hems.

So, that's my first project of 2014! When the temps crawl out of the  -27C deep-freeze we're having right now, I'll try to get an outdoor live-body pic to add here.  :)

Blue is the colour of the future

Other than a couple of seemingly trivial but very necessary projects such as warm fleece pillowcases for my  bald and thus perpetually cold head, I haven't sewn for myself since before I deployed to Kabul nearly a year ago.  Since my return, all my can-do efforts have been directed at others: home, family, friends, certainly not at me.  Why?  well, pardon the black humour, but dead people don't need new clothes; sewing for me struck me as the worst kind of wasted effort in a race against time.  Yet here I am, nearly six months since the Big C entered my home, and not only am I still standing, but doing pretty well it seems, and beginning to feel hopeful.  So when I was left with a sizable remnant of midnight blue cotton velvet left over from making a Christmas gift dressing gown for my eldest, I thought:  why not make something for myself?  A velvet jacket, wouldn't it be lovely?  Maybe I'll even get to wear it, who knows?   

I had to add another metre to what I already had, and buy a few buttons and some fabric dye for the lining, so I'm counting this one as a $15 jacket.  

My idea was a shawl or tuxedo collar jacket; I thought that a shawl collar would go nicely with the softness of the velvet, and be very feminine in a structured way.  I spent a little time browsing the web for inspiration, and settled on this Alexander McQueen blue velvet blazer. 

Not that I intended to copy it slavishly, definitely not, but it gave me ideas for a few extra touches I wanted my jacket to have so it could rise above the pattern I picked. 

And the pattern? New Look 6013.   Cute, I thought, with the single button just holding together the dropped angled fronts.  One thing I wasn't crazy about was the shoulder-pleated single piece sleeve:  first, it seemed to widen the shoulder area and I already have pretty broad shoulders as it is, and secondly the pleating could turn into a general fail with a thick fabric like velvet. I also don't think a stovepipe sleeve is the greatest idea in a structured, lined jacket.  So I substituted a two piece sleeve from McCall's 5395, though any other two piece sleeve you might have on hand would presumably work just as well. I'd used M5395 a few times already in some unlined summer jackets, so I knew it fit my arm just fine.  Below, you see the two patterns I put together for this project lying on the dark blue cotton velvet fabric I used.  The M5395, btw, is so out of print it doesn't even appear on McCall's web page.  Pity!  It's a great pattern:  the two front darts give an amazing fit to well endowed but small-waisted figures.  

Blue cotton velvet jacket:  New Look 6013 body, McCall's 5395 sleeves

The NL pattern is unlined, but since cotton is so grabby I knew this one would need to be lined.  Using the back pattern piece, I made a back neck facing and a back lining with a 1" pleat pattern pieces, and those, combined with the side fronts and side backs, gave me the lining. 

Per the A.McQ. inspiration, I notched the pattern up a bit with the following additions:  single-welt chest pocket; angled double-welt flap pockets at the hip; and vented sleeves with working buttonholes and buttons. And, of course, a lining, which is absent in the NL pattern. 

Speaking of the lining:  I had a substantial length of rayon (according to my burn test) lining from who knows where - its origins lost in the sands of time - but still a beautiful beefy twill weave rayon, much nicer than your run of the mill Bemberg (apologies to B....).  Only my piece was a nothing to look at light greyish beige: yuck!  So I dyed it.  

The dyeing exercise was quite the learning experience.  I started with a Jacquard acid dye that is completely unsuited for cellulose based fabrics. Of course it didn't take - but I twigged onto that early enough, ie., before pouring the dye solution away, that I could grab a bit of winter-white silk and dye that instead.  I then used Dylon dye on the rayon.  It took, though not as strongly as I'd hoped, and instead of a deep violet gave me a kind of pinkish periwinkle.  Still a nice contrasty match for my midnight blue velvet.

Left:  rayon lining dyed with Dylon Intense Violet.
Right:  silk jacquard dyed with Jacquard Acid dye, Sapphire Blue.
Original fabrics on the bottom, dyed on the top.

Those stage-setting steps put me well on the way to construction.  Which I'll cover in my next post.  :)