Denim jacket Simplicity 2209 part 1

After stocking up my closet with some new dresses I figured it was time to change directions. I have been wanting a lightweight black denim jacket and also been itching to try a new technique I saw in Threads magazine for bias half lining.This post could have been titled "All's well that ends well" because in the end I don't have a new denim jacket but my friend Alice does.
I started with Simplicity 2209 which is an unlined princess seamed jacket with welt pockets.

    

That ruffle neck version is kind of frightful and maybe the version I made is as well. In the end what I didn't like is the slight overlap in the front, on me it just looked odd but on Alice it looks very good.

Anyway...here is the technique I saw in Threads.  Kind of cool, huh?  Definitely has potential.

Although now I can say that it is just as easy to make a regular lining and it might take less fabric. Here is the jacket back with the pattern piece I made according to the dimensions called for in the article. You lay the jacket back over the crossed triangles which are pinned together so they don't shift, cut out the jacket shape, and then carefully put the triangles over the wrong side of the jacket and sew in. It is explained much better in the article than I am doing as you can see in the photo above.

The result is this lining in the upper back of the jacket. The bottom lonf edges of the triangles are folded on the bias so the whole thing has a nice movement and flex across the shoulders and back. I thought it was clever and it came out very well but I doubt I will use it again. Fun to try though.  The lining is something I found at an estate sale, not sure what it is, maybe an acetate but the color is a nice contrast to the black denim. I was thinking I would do a bias binding on all the seams but once I got to that point I thought, who am I kidding? way too fiddly for me to do so I serged all the edges with matching rose red thread. 

However I did put a bias binding around the armhole because it would have looked kind of strange to see serging there, also in the article it looked good with the bias binding on the armhole. Well their whole jacket looks very nice but honestly if I made that plaid wool jacket it would have a complete lining in it. Itchy, right?

Finished jacket photos in my next post. 

How about a pink dahlia for my garden photo? Just this one bloom so far but it is perfection.

Happy summer sewing, Beth