Sewing In a Time Of Epidemic, or, The (Not-)Wedding Guest Jacket Completed

Is this the most "fiddling while Rome burns" thing I have ever written? Possibly. Truthfully, though, for most of us there comes a point when you have done all the things you CAN do that will actually make a difference to the current situation, and then you are left with too much time on your hands. At that point, you can either use that time to work yourself up in a frenzy of anxiety over the things that are happening that you CAN'T change or affect, which will make you feel awful and yet also not improve the situation in any way; or you can distract yourself at least some of the time. My second favourite distraction (nothing will ever beat reading to first favourite) is of course sewing. If I end up documenting sewing my way to a whole new wardrobe over this spring/summer and burning through half my stash in the process: well, so be it.

So, let me kick off with a completed project I've talked about before: the (Not) Wedding Guest Jacket. I last posted about it at muslin stage as I prepared to make it to wear to a family wedding in April. Alas, by the time I was even halfway through construction it already looked unlikely I'd be able to attend, and at this point the wedding has been postponed until 2021.

Nevertheless, I decided to keep going to finish the jacket, partly for the distraction, but mostly because I'm not someone who keeps a pile of part-finished sewing projects: I tend to work on things consecutively rather than concurrently. I really wanted to finish this before I moved on, and I wanted to finish it as nicely as possible, because I do think it is still a fun garment and a useful addition to my wardrobe.

McCalls 7513 cover art. I made the modelled version (A) with the pleated peplum.

As I described in my last post, I had decided to make McCall's 7513, a semi-fitted jacket with a peplum, with the variations in the pattern being mostly in the length and style of the peplum. I made the version in the modelled image, A, with the shorter, pleated peplum, although I left off that little band you can see on the back. I made no other significant changes to the design that weren't about fit or comfort. However, I did make a great many adjustments, after running through multiple bodice muslins, as described previously, and then subsequently many, MANY sleeve muslins.

Front view of my version of McCall's 7513 on my tailor's dummy

As far as the fit adjustments go, I started with the things I now tend to do automatically: rounded back, squaring and narrowing the shoulder, and adding length to the bodice. As I mentioned in my last post I also changed the front waist darts to shoulder princess seams, matching the construction of the back, because I thought this fit better and was more aesthetically pleasing.

Side view, which shows the peplum a little more clearly

I have to admit I struggled more than usual with adjusting the waist. As you can see on the envelope cover, the jacket is intended to be very nipped in at the waist. Great theory, shame about my actual waist measurement! I ended up grading out from the smallest size in my pack (14) at the shoulder and neck to the largest (22) at the waist, which is ridiculous and produced some wacky looking pattern pieces. Also, the front and back are supposed to ease together, and on my tailor's dummy this makes it look weirdly blouson at the waist seam -- it's not in real life!

Back view

After my last post I also spent a LOT of time figuring out the fit of the sleeves. Although this turned out to be a lot of effort, I learned a huge amount from doing so.

I had started out by doing my ususal large bicep adjustment without thinking too much about it. I have always historically done this adjustment using the pivot and slide method. If you've ever used this method, you'll know that if you make more than a tiny adjustment, the pivot/slide process of making the sleeve wider also results in a much flatter sleeve cap. After a lot of googling (and seam ripping), and some helpful advice from online sewing friends, I discovered that I was to a very large extent creating my own sleeve twist problems by not restoring the height of the cap after the adjustment. The shortened length of the cap drags the sleeves askew in wear. The fix is luckily really simple: stop doing that! On the plus side, I've got a fix now for a sleeve problem I've had in nearly every woven long sleeve garment I've ever made. On the minus side, it's galling to realize that it was always entirely a problem of my own creation. Oops!

I would say 80% of the twist was resolved by re-doing the bicep adjustment so I got the extra width but kept the original sleeve cap height. I then got another 10% by attempting a forward shoulder adjustment for the first time. I want to refine how I use this adjustment a little more but the 1cm adjustment I did on this occasion seemed to make a visible difference. And finally, I added just a tiny bit of extra room at the elbow (because apparently I have big elbows, who knew) and that resolved the twist another percentage point or so more. I still feel like the sleeves want to twist a tiny bit, but nothing like they did before, and only in the way that a straight, undarted sleeve will always want to twist a bit with the more complicated shape of an arm inside.

A close-up of the fabric. The shiny part is created by the silver thread in the brocade catching the light.

I also want to talk more specifically about the fabric. The pattern I ended up with was all curves and angles, because of the aforementioned fit adjustments and princess seams. I made some limited effort to pattern match when I was cutting out, but I definitely did not have enough fabric to really make a solid effort at it, and also, frankly, pattern matching perfectly across curved seams often feels beyond my spatial reasoning capabilities.

On the left, one of the few places the "stripe" actually lines up. Not going to lie, this does look better, certainly in close up. Most of the rest of the garment, the seam "matching" looks like the image on the left. /o\

But why am I pattern matching, you might be thinking? Well, that's because when you're up close to the fabric, it's a stripe. About a quarter of the way through construction, I panicked. As I was sewing, the fact that the stripe matching was terrible seemed really glaring and I felt like the jacket was going to look hideous. But then as soon as I stepped back from the sewing to look at the jacket from a normal viewing distance, I calmed down again, because I don't think the overwhelming impression at a normal viewing distance is of a badly matched stripe. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most people wouldn't consider it a stripe at all at a glance from normal viewing distance.

Would the overall finish of the jacket have been better if I'd done a better job of pattern matching the stripe? I mean, maybe? If I'd had a lot more fabric and spent more time on it, and above all else if I had cut the fabric out single layer, I might have produced something a bit more stripe matched, and maybe the jacket overall would have looked just a little more beautiful and better made. As it was I had to do some pattern tetris just to get the pattern onto the fabric I had, and I am not sure that I cared enough about this particular garment to go to all that effort. This feels "good enough" for this project.

The lining fabric, the faux Hong Kong seams (bottom) and the bias edged hem (on the right)

One final change I made to the pattern that was also driven by the fabric was that the pattern calls for the bodice and sleeves to be fully lined while the peplum is left unlined. I picked a white lining with a subtle circular jacquard for the bodice/sleeve lining, which I like a lot. Initially I was enthusiastic about leaving the peplum unlined because the wrong side of this fabric is even more startlingly shiny than the right side because of the silver embroidery thread. I thought flashes of that would be fun.

However, as I was constructing and periodically trying on the shell, I realized the wrong side of the fabric was HORRIBLY itchy. Just the thought of the unlined peplum accidentally coming into contact with bare skin for an instant was appalling. The right side is fine -- the wrong side is death by a thousand prickles. So I interlined the peplum using the fake hong kong finish edges (where you cut the lining a little wider and fold it over the cut edges of the main fabric) and added a bias tape edge to the hem to finish it.

And then I pranced around the room in my jacket with my camera clicker taking a million photos. Truly awful.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with this jacket! I think it looks great with jeans so I am not sorry I own it as an option for any future going out sort of occasion, even if the original event I made it for did not go ahead. And who knows, maybe it can be part of my outfit for my family member's wedding when she eventually ties the knot next year.

Next up in my sewing room: a super easy summer dressing gown, which I have actually nearly finished already.

In the meantime, I hope everybody reading is well and stays well, and that you all find your own healthy distractions to keep your mind occupied while we all struggle through this period of our lives.

The Wedding Guest Outfit, Part I: Fabric and jacket muslin

It's March, and I have PLANS for the month, mostly to do with the outfit I am wearing to attend a wedding in April. I have been trying to decide what to make for a while now, with only partial success.

I feel like I should point out that this is a wedding where literally nobody cares what I look like. I'm a member of the bride's extended family but she's a lot younger than me (9 years) and our families aren't close. I'm not in the bridal party, I'll only know a handful of people, and just. Nobody cares. If I'm honest, the only reason I am focussing so hard on this stupid outfit is because, you know, the world is on fire (metaphorically) and I need the distraction. Also the first two months of the year have been appalling, weather-wise, and just the thought that it might one day be spring wedding season was something to cling on to through all the rain and (thankfully not directly affecting me) flooding.

What I'm trying to say is: my life does not actually depend in any way on making a successful wedding guest outfit, but you'd be forgiven for not realizing this based on the amount of mental effort I've put in so far.

At any rate, I have three well-defined priorities for the outfit:

1. It has to be suitable for the actual event: a spring wedding (late April) in the far north-east of England. There's always a chance that the weather might be nice, but it's statistically more likely it will be relatively cool and possibly wet. The wedding venue is indoors, however, so I don't need a full on coat. The wedding dress code is "dress to impress" which is.... not enormously helpful, but definitely made me pull out everything I own in the way of fancier fabrics -- lace, brocade, etc -- to consider. I naturally gravitate to darker colours, but I think a spring wedding calls for something at the lighter end of the range of colours I normally wear.

2. I'd like to be able to re-wear the components of the outfit at a later stage. I really don't go to a lot of weddings, or a lot of formal occasions in general, so ideally I don't want to make garments that I only wear once.

3. I want to be at least mostly comfortable, and to feel like I dressed appropriately. This is harder to pin down, but you know, when you look for images of spring wedding guest outfits you get basically pretty little floaty chiffon outfits as worn by 25 year olds and, at the other end of the spectrum, mother-of-the-bride outfits, and I am in neither camp!

In the end, after running through Plans A to Z and then back again, I have settled on a combination of two turquoise fabrics for my outfit:

Wedding guest outfit fabrics

The details of these fabrics do not photograph at all well in winter light!

The fabric on the left is a glazed linen. You can sort of see that it has an almost silvery sheen on top of the turquoise when the light catches it from the glazed effect. The fabric on the right is a brocade embroidered to look like darker turquoise and silver/pewter sequins. I actually bought these fabrics something like 3.5 years apart and with no intention of putting them together in an outfit, but they look great put together. I have 2m of the brocade and just over 3m of the glazed linen. However, I stored the linen badly and as a result I have a narrow section of sun damage running in a horizontal line about 1m into the fabric -- so I have 1m on one side of the line and 2m+ a bit on the other.

I waffled even more over patterns than fabrics, and I am not done with that part of this drama AT ALL. However, I have made one definite choice, which is to pair the sequin fabric with McCall's 7513.

The pattern I plan to use

 More specifically, I decided to use the cover model, view A, the shorter length with the pleated back peplum.

Muslin v 3 with shoulder princess seams on me and on Flossie

I have not used too many McCall's patterns, so I knew I definitely needed a muslin. In fact I needed three muslins to get to a fit level I like, and I made a whole laundry list of adjustments. The first muslin was a disaster (started from too large a size, then wondered why it fit at the bust and waist but the shoulder points were literally 6cm past my shoulder. Duh.). Version 2 was improvement (started 3 sizes smaller at the shoulder plus an additional narrow shoulder adjustment, with width adjustments for my bust and waist). The third muslin has a single but very significant change compared to muslin 2: I just don't like the combination of waist darts and my large, low bust, so I tried converting the darts to shoulder princess seams to match the way the back is constructed. I am really pleased with the final muslin, although I have one fit problem outstanding that I want to try to fix before I cut out the final version: my sleeves tend to twist towards the front.

My to do list for this week therefore looks like this: try to fix the sleeve issue; cut/trace/adjust the pieces of the pattern I didn't address in the muslin (lining, collar, facings); then cut out and interface where necessary. My goal is to set myself up to spend next weekend actually doing jacket construction. (Which I will doubtless document on Instagram, if you're interested!)

The elephant in the room is that I still don't know what to wear WITH the jacket. I thought I had setttled on a plan of a plain-ish darker teal silk blouse and a circle skirt with the glazed linen, but I keep being drawn to other options, including possibly making a dress, even though I am least likely to wear a dress again in the future. I think I will end up experimenting with some muslin options to see what I like best once the jacket is done.

Actually, this last point relates to the best news I have, which is that my long dormant -- or at least frequently napping -- sew-jo has roared back in full force, and now I want to Make All The Things and experiment with all kinds of stuff. I'm really looking forward to refreshing my wardrobe for spring and summer this year once the Wedding Guest Outfit is done.

Some of that will have to wait a bit though as my last update for today is that I managed to break my overlocker making a gift for my mum. :(

A "twin set" of cardigan and t-shirt, both using Ottobre patterns (tee & cardigan on left; t-shirt only on right)

My parents are off on a trip and as they will be away during UK Mother's Day (22 March -- don't panic, North Americans, we celebrate Mother's Day on a different day than you!) I decided to make my mum a gift before she left that she could take with her. I therefore made this t-shirt and cardigan set using a black polyester knit that has a floral design picked out in small silver plastic spots on the surface. The fabric is totally uncrushable and doesn't wrinkle, so it's perfect to stuff in a suitcase, and the pieces are really simple but the colour/fabric make them perfect to wear to dinner. I used two easy patterns from Ottobre, specifically 02-2012-09, a short-sleeved waterfall cardigan -- I made elbow length plain sleeves rather than the split sleeves in the pattern; and 02-2019-13, a simple square neckline tee -- I opened up the neckline a little by turning the binding to the inside, so it would fit in a way that showed off a necklace.

I'm going to be honest: they look really pretty in the photos, and in theory I like them a lot. In practice, that surface detail of little dots crunched a needle in my overlocker in the first 10 minutes of sewing and the broken needle killed my machine (temporarily I hope, I am waiting for a part) and it all went downhill from there. I made mistake after mistake, struggled with the fabric, managed to leave a (small, hard to see) scorch mark on the fabric and the silver smeared off one of the dots along one of the side seams of the t-shirt. I had to do two thirds of the construction on my regular machine so the inside of this garment looks utterly amateur, and I was overall embarrassed to give them to my mum as a gift! :( I am banking on maternal affection and the fact that it actually does look good from a few meters away to make it a worthwhile gift. /o\