Last details done

First pictures of the jacket in two different outfits. I already see that I shall use this jacket a lot.

A few detail pictures. I love the lines of this pattern and am glad I didn’t do the topstitching to the dart. It’s good as it is. The fit is quite good, but not perfect. My sewing teacher still saw a few things that could be altered, mainly in the sleeve area. That was a difficult part because of the space and the fact that denim is difficult to ease. I took out quite a bit out of the top of the sleevecap.

I made the following changes to the pattern (after morphing two patterns together):

1. vertical darts in the back
2. made the center back seam narrower
3. more shaping in the waist
4. given a bit more space at hip height
5. lengthened the sleeve

 

As said above, the fabric is a black, non stretch denim, the lining a piece I had in my collection.

For the topstitching I used Gütermann upholstery thread, topstitching needle and extra stitch length. For the buttonholes I used the same colornumber, but normal thread quality. General sewing was done with a jeans needle.

Oh, and I almost forgot: for the sleeve I used the instructions for the Jalie jeans jacket (especially the topstitching part of it). I rememered that I loved these instructions and took them out to use here.

 

All pictures can be seen here.

Almost ready and a quick project

The jacket still needs buttonholes and buttons and some handstitching of the lining. Today I was sidetracked by the idea of combining it with the almost abstract floral fabric and made a skirt of it.

I bought the fabric initially with a shirt in mind, but changed plans when it arrived. This is better use of the fabric for me. The pattern is from an old Knip Mode issue (2007), and just a basic 8 pieces skirt with a small yoke on top. Now I have to find a few tanktops in the colors in the skirt (teal, purple, olive among them).

Next time I’ll show pictures of me wearing the finished jacket.

Exhibition

Wednesday I visited the Haute couture exhibition in The Hague. The museum is a piece of art itself, very beautiful designed by Berlage and in a nice area of the city. It’s a great venue for such an exhibition. Now there is an exhibition on the painter Kandinsky too, and that’s next on my list to visit and then I will visit the couture exhibition again as well.

It is a lovely exhibition, you can see the garments mostly from very close distance and they managed to get some really great garments and styles together. Recent collections have a bit more emphasis, though there are also quite a bit of older pieces.

What was lacking was good, easily available information on the garments. It was only in the second or third room that we found out that the basic information we were looking for with a row of garments (date, couturier, fabric for example) was on a wall in small print on the other end of the room.  Not very helpful and there was no leaflet either to take with you.

All the eye candy made up for that though, and it was fun to visit with Valerie, who I met last year through my blog and our shared passion for (lingerie) sewing.

The museum allows photography without flash, so here a few pictures to share.

Dior

 

??? No explanation on the use of this or how it’s intended, but there are pins (and nails) in the bust. And look at the pinholder on the arm.

Chanel (1938 I think it was), great work with the godets/darts

Chanel 2009

 

Now off to sew the lining in my jacket.

More than a month

More than a month ago I started this jacket, it is taking forever. Now spring finally arrived, I feel the urge to finish it and sew some brighter colors (and sew a bit more!). The topstitching really cost me headaches. Belinda in her review mentioned no problems with the alignment of dart and pocket,  Debra H had problems and opted for a curve. I had to fiddle a bit to get them aligned.

I was not satisfied with the topstitching and the width it got to be because of it coming from both sides of the pocket. I tried 3 times, and changed the topstitching to my Bernina machine. It kept looking very poorly and I then succumbed to not topstitching up to the dart. The easy way out...

Miriam and Mem: thanks for the details of my old Elna machine, I certainly agree that machines are not made like that anymore.

Jacket in progress

First of all thank you for your kind words on my last post. They certainly helped. As this is mainly a blog about sewing I will not write too much about my feelings or private life, but sometimes I can’t help myself writing a little personal note.

I would like to say a special hello to the Dutch ladies who commented on my post on the exhibition in The Hague, nice to know you’re here and like to read my blog.

The jacket is coming along slowly. Tonight I’ve assembled some “easy” pieces. The front piece with zipper and special topstitching from zipper to dart I’ll leave for a moment when I have enough time to do it all at once.

I've taken my old extra sewing machine (bought second hand, I don’t know how old it actually is) out of its cover and installed this one for topstitching. It does that much better than expected actually. It saves me continually changing threads on one machine.

As said in my last post, the jacket is a combination of two patterns, the first one has the collar that I wanted, including the special stand construction:

This is from the June 2004 issue

and this one from the January 2007 issue (line drawing in previous post)

And Nowak, thanks for the update on the Burda archives, hope they will be back soon.

No sewing

It’s been quiet on my blog in the past two weeks and I’ve been very absent on the internet in general. The reason is that I’ve lost a dear friend last week who I’ve known for 30 years . Not exactly the time to do a lot of sewing, let alone writing blog posts.  I just felt sad and still am not my old self.

But sewing will help me getting back in the normal routine and it’s always good to find something to do. So I might plan sewing 4 garments and join the mini wardrobe contest on Pattern review.

But first I’m sewing a denim jacket (I know I had other jacket plans before, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen the way you think it will). I’ve sewn the muslin and my sewing teacher helped me fitting it. I still have to draw the alterations to the pattern, but otherwise I’m ready to start.

It’s from the January 2007 Burda issue, no. 110. I’m morphing it however with no 112 from the June issue from 2004 for center front and collar.

On the German site there always were archives back till 2004, now I can’t find archives on the German site at all! The English site still has the archives, but only back till 2006. Does anyone know whether I’m just missing a link or have the archives really been removed?