1.1m jacket: finished at last!

At long, long, very loooong last!

None of you will remember my "1.1 meter challenge" post from waaaay back in May..... I know you won't, the blogosphere moves at such a rapid pace, it's not possible.

It's been an impossibly hectic spring/summer/fall here Chez StraightJacket. Pulled into a gadzillion directions, I've been.  And I'm happy to say that finally, many events and continents and thousands of miles/kilometers behind me, here I am again... finally occupying my oversize dining table with scraps of fabric and the clackety sound that my boys love so much.

One of my personal pet peeves (have I mentioned it before?) is the abandonment of unfinished projects.  Yes, I know we all have UFOs (unfinished objects).  Guilty!!!!  But I hate, I detest, I truly despise them.  An abandoned project is the epitome of wasted resources:  fabric, patterns, electricity, all those other resources that equal cold hard cash, but most of all, the queen of all non-renewable and precious resources, time.

So today,  give me and all UFO finishers a little bit of applause. But not TOO  much applause:  I missed the opportunity for an outdoor photo op on the last beautiful day of the year, and until it stops raining, hanger pics is all I can do for the moment.

The jacket is the exclusive design from BurdaStyle Magazine Oct. 2008, pattern 131.  I cut size 38, and lengthened the hem 5 cm.  It's fully underlined with silk organza and lined with bemberg rayon.  The usual suspects (cuffs, collar, belt ties) are interfaced, so the interfacing is fused to the organza.  I added a wedge of fusible hair canvas to the lapels for extra oomph.

It's a lovely little pattern, if rather boxy.  I was attracted by the unusual collar-lapel treatment:  it's not often you see a collar laying over the lapels this way, and I wanted to try this technique.  The collar actually takes a 90 degree downwards swing at the corner of the neckline, and attaches to the facings!  Sneaky!  

Since I decided to omit shoulder pads, I had to shave the sharply angled curve of the raglan shoulder down a smidgeon. (I'm of the opinion that summer jackets have a duty to imbue the wearer with a certain summertime casualness and je ne sais quois,  thus no shoulder pads).  Everything is top stitched to death, but I used self thread, not wanting any contrast. My machine, sigh, is an aged lady, and I no longer have trust in its stitch consistency.

The back side:  central pleat, and waist tabs.  The edges of the pleat are stitched to help them keep their ever-new knife sharpness.  The waist tabs were a surprise!  I chose to use buckles with teeth rather than a prong, thereby avoiding making holes in the straps.

A year later, and I still haven't had a chance to wear this item.  Here are some extra photos showing the front and back details, including the collar-lapel construction detail that so intrigued me.

The roomy back can be cinched by the little side belts to provide some shaping.

The raglan sleeves and centre back box pleat also add interest to the back view.

The pocket welts are inserted into the vertical darts.

Collar band is sandwiched between the lapel and its lining. Aha!

And what is that purple thing peeking out from under the jacket (in the original photos)?  Ah, well, that's another no-longer-UFO (another round of applause?).  A poly chiffon top, and tube scarf out of its remnant.

I used my tank top TNT, and added a new variation:  there's a seam across the bustline, allowing me to give the sides dart-like shaping, and a central pleat in the lower section.  Those two things let the chiffon drape very gracefully, if I may say.  

Well, with all that, I was on a roll.  Not sewing last summer didn't stop me from buying fabric!  During the summer I visited an Indian sari shop in Montreal, and they had a crazy sale on silk scarves.  So, I grabbed this delightful red crepe - it's overprinted with a subtle paisley-ish pattern, which is unfortunately completely invisible in the photo - and I managed to make a top AND a scarf out of that today.  Hah!  The scarf is just a flat length, not a tube like the one above. 

This one has a pleat at the centre neckline (it only looks like it's pleated at the hem, but it's not), and two opposing pleats at the hips.

Whew. I'm all blogged out for today! And all sewed out. Then again... A beautiful lightweight light beige wool  destined for trousers to go with the jacket has finished drying on the couch- I might get it cut tonight if I regain some oomph after dinner.   I'm thinking of using a simplified version of the Jalie jeans pattern for the trousers. What do you think of that, sewers out there?

Paris, je t'aime!

Apartment living in the most beautiful city in the world:  les huitres au citron, un peu de vin, tout en  plein-air. 

What I'm wearing:  my post-Kandahar summer wardrobe.  I love this little draped adaptation of a one-shoulder Burda top. The slacks I love a little less - though I'm fighting to regain the weight I lost at KAF, it's hard work, and all my bottoms - skirts & pants - are still too baggy.  Much of the time I look like I'm playing dressup in my mother's closet:  NOT a great look anywhere, but especially not so in très chic Paris!

Yum, yum!

I made this little Burda jacket nearly two years ago, but never actually had the occasion to wear it till now - and how's this for perfect colour coordination with the environs? I'm practically invisible.  

.

And speaking of invisible:  le Panthéon est bien grand et impressionnant, mais ou est Waldo? 

Meeting the 1.1 meter challenge

I traced and placed the pattern for BurdaStyle 10-2008-131 on my fabric, and I can hardly believe it.  The jacket's pattern pieces actually fits, with oh so much room to spare (none, actually!), on the yardage - er, one point one meterage - that I have.  I haven't trimmed all the seam allowances yet, but they'll be 0.5", which is half the nearest distance between any two pieces.  

The fabric appears to be a uniform beige-cream herringbone, but it actually has pastel colour lines in both directions: pink and yellow lines run horizontally while purple and green run vertically. I used these colour lines to pin the fabric "true" together correctly, and to align the grain lines of the pattern pieces with the fabric. 

I managed to get the back, back pleat, front, pocket welts and front facings matched with respect to the location of the yellow and pink stripe...

....and, as shown above, the sleeve fronts are matched with sleeve backs. 

Even the collar and collar stand (aka collar band in Burdaspreche) fit.  The under-collar band is on a bias with a centre seam.  The under collar, also with a centre seam, is on grain, because that's the only way it could fit in the the only space left:   in that area outlined in blue between the two sleeve pieces.

So, yeah, I'm kind of tickled.  I did of course have a plan b...and c.... there are plenty of simple collarless jacket patterns out there - but it's nice to have Plan A start out so auspiciously.

A little tip for these tight to fit fabric demands:  I found making a pattern piece for Every Single Piece (except the undercollar, which is drawn in), no matter how trivial, even stupid little belt loops, was really important.  Otherwise I'd have been guaranteed to goof somewhere along the line by spacing this or that too generously, or forgetting to make room for one item or other.

So the cute little jacket is cued.  Yes, cued - because I have to  finish this colour-blocked dress that's been hanging around for, oh.... how long?

Six weeks. Awful of me, right? It's edging dangerously close to UFO territory.  I don't like UFOs - time not well spent, and all that.  Lucky for me this little number just got a little motivation to get finished.  

My great conflict of interest, though?  My garden is finally awake.  And when it's sunny I do NOT want to be indoors.   Outside, there's always something fun going on: 

Chipmunk with peanut and hosta

Black and white warbler

Pine squirrel aka chickaree

Once the garden comes alive with these and lots of other cuties, slaving over a hot sewing machine and an even hotter steam iron demands psychological oomph.  Stucktuitiveness is the word of the week!

Spring colours

It's looking less and less likely that my trench coat will happen this spring:  once the snows melt here in mid-continental Canada, the season springs into summer in an eyeblink.  No matter, I still have a lightweight (purchased) trench that wears like iron and will easily last another season or two or ten.  And, honestly, I prefer to make day clothes.

To that end, I've fallen off my no-fabric-buying wagon, and grabbed a few little pieces recently.  First, a little bit of a "super-duper" tan-grey wool from Fabric Mart. Expensive, yes! amazingly expensive at first glance, but I've seen how this kind of superfine wool wears:  your grandkids will inherit the garment - in my case, a pair of slacks - that you'll make out of it, and that's no joke.

Then I grabbed a little bit of a wool-silk blend, also from FM, literally for a song. So things average out, right?  Unfortunately by the time I put this lovely cream-tan herringbone in my shopping cart, there was only a yard left - gulp!  Ok, I thought, so I'll make a llittle summer skirt out of it.  

How do the two separate purchases connect?  Well, once I had both of them at home, it became blindingly obvious that they were made for each other. The tan of the super-wool and the tan of the silk-wool mini-houndstooth are perfect together.  Even if my camera's digital response to the two doesn't quite show it,  IRL the wool at left is a good match to the houndstooth's tan.

I like the two of them so much, they can't both become bottoms..  The tan wool will definitely become slacks. So my miniscule little bit of silk-wool has to become a top of some sort.  A jacket? a miniscule, cropped, teeny tiny jacket?  Luckily my 1 yd (0.9 m) purchase arrived as a hugely generous 1.1 m. I'm thinking that if I use remnants of the superfine wool (after the slacks are made) for undercollar, facing, and/or cuff or hem facings, I might even be able to eke out a jacket with a collar out of it. Gosh how I'd love to get just a teeny bit more of it - would't it be just amazing if FM found another yard, or even half a yard, lying around begging for a loving home?!

There's one more reason why the silk-wool houndstooth would be a great top:  it has a rectangular check pattern on it. The weft check is spaced 4.75" apart, and is yellow and pink, while the warp check is spaced at 4", and is green and purple.   It's a soft, subtle, and delicious check, nearly invisible in these pics.  I'm not going to work hard at matching the jacket pattern to the check, but I'll definitely refer to the colours for whatever tops I'll be making to go under it.

At this point, with the pattern not yet traced, so this is still a bit pie in the sky, I'm hoping to eke out this little jacket:

The jacket is BurdaStyle Magazine (formerly Burda World of Fashion) pattern 131 from October 2008. The collar and facings may make fitting this particular pattern onto 1.1m quite a challenge.  Next step: trace and find out!

Burda At A Glance Archive Redux

Feb. 2015 update:

Many of us are aware that Burda Fashion has reinvented itself as Burda Style. I looked at their old and new pages in English, French, Italian, Russian, and Hungarian.  Hmmm.  Burda has a very split personality, it seems:  there's no rhyme or reason or consistency between the various language versions.

To cut to the chase, for those of us interested at looking at the last few years' back patterns and their technical/line drawings online, the best archive offered by Burda Style itself is still the Russian site, burdastyle.ru/zhurnaly (meaning, Magazines).  You can also get there from the burdastyle.ru home page by clicking on the second from left word : Журналы in the top menu.  This page will give you access to patterns going back to 01/2004.   

There's also a new and very interesting downloadable and interactive archive at Burdavisor.ru. Using it is a little tricky, as you have find a secondary page and download a zipped html file.  To do that, locate the menu at lower right of the web page, and click on the second from right menu button "Загрузка", as shown by the bright red-orange arrow in the image below:

That will take you to the Zagruzka download page: 

On the Zagruzka page, the red arrow marked 1 shows which menu item you just accessed.  To download the archive, click on the link word "Скачать" that's indicated by the arrow number 2, or click on the word itself on the above line, as it's linked.  The linked archive is a zipped file of burdavisor.htm that's about 830 Mb when unzipped.  Repeat the process any time you want to update your archive to the current month; the downloaded zip file always has the same name: burdavisor.zip. To help you get started, here's the the 15 Feb 2015 file. Open the zip archive and double click on the burdavisor.htm file to open it with your web browser, and then have fun browsing the vertical menu along the left. You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Just remember to double click on the images to access what's linked to them. 

As for online Burda archives that go back further, to years before 2004, the best are still the following Russian language links:  

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/burdahistory/15088/ :  German-language Burda Moden from 1950 to 1988. NB, the web page is Russian, but the scans are of the German magazines.

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/biblioteka/15303/ :  Russian language Burda magazines from 1987 to 2011, then a gap of two years, then three issues from 2014 and one from 2015.

http://osinka.ru/Zhurnaly/2012/ : Osinka Magazines archive.  To make it easier to access the dates box along the left side of the linked web page, I'm linking to the 2012 year, which at present is the last year with all 12 monthly Burda magazines archived on this site.  There are only three Burda issues for 2013 and none for the more recent years.  The nice thing about this archive is that it also has some of the Burda Plus, Burda Kids, and Burda Easy special issues, plus some Ottobre magazine issues for those of you who like to sew for kids, plus a lot of recent knitting magazines, including hand and machine knitting.  

Apr. 2012:

Burda, don't we all love her?  Haven't we all sewn at least SOMEthing from one of her mags? Haven't we adored Burda on the web, and hated the ahem, new and improved BurdaStyle approach to her customer base?  I detest BurdaStyle.  In order to avoid it, I've reverted to Burda's Russian language page, Burda Mir Mody, hah, lucky me to be able to deal with the cyrillic and the language (for moi, language of the oppressor), but for the rest of you being forcibly redirected to BurdaStyle, I do feel your pain.  And yes, I know that I'm not the first to voice these complaints.

I've been buying fewer and fewer of the issues, feeling a tad let down by the oversimplified offerings of the past year.  But oh yes, I do love May '12!  Feb '12 isn't bad either... Still... Burda, if you're listening, it's time to recycle some of your super jacket patterns from days gone by. Like, oh gosh, 103A from Oct 2007. How I'd love to get my hands on that pattern.  Or 116 from the same issue - those seam lines are just begging to be colour-blocked, and what's more current than blocking this year?  Or pretty much just about any of the jackets from 2006 and early 2007.  I love the seaming in those, they're still perfectly current, and will remain so forever.  Are you listening, Burda?  Less loose vacation tops, and more structured garments for us that like a little challenge, please!

I discovered recently that my Burda At A Glance Archive button along the left sidebar is no longer functional:  "Oops, Sorry, you're trying to access a feature that is no longer supported", says Google.  Well, I'm spitting bullets at you, Google, since we both know that you could've ported the link to my Burda Archive to your new style documents format, except your software designers were simply too lazy to deal graciously with your customer base.  Ugh.

On the bright side:  I recently found these amazing historical resources:

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/burdahistory/15088/ :  German-language Burda Moden from 1950 to 1988. 

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/biblioteka/15303/ :  Russian language Burda magazines from 1987 to 2011.

What is truly amazing is that these archives show EVERY PAGE of these magazines.  Well, they attempt to. The execution is occasionally uneven - but for the most part, it's very good.  All you vintage enthusiasts out there, how fantastic is it to have access to the almost Dorothy-from-the-Wizard-of-Oz fashions of 1952?

If you want a more modern link to Burda's patterns, try http://osinka.ru/Zhurnaly/ . Over on the left, under "Osinka.ru", the year numbers underneath "журналы онлайн" (ie, online journals) link to patterns published in Burda magazines beginning in 2001 up to 2012. Page-by-individual-page.  Pretty...darned...amazing.

This is why I've linked my Burda At A Glance Archive button to this here post.  That way I'll always have a quick and efficient way to find the most comprehensive list of Burda archive collections out there that I can find. And so will you!

Acknowledgement:  I discovered the links to these Burda archives while browsing http://joanka-z.blogspot.ca/.  Dziękuję Ci bardzo, Joanko!