Jacket Sewing Class completed and a Jasika Blazer for a friend

Perhaps it's the year we've all had or the fact that I have enough jackets to last me a good long while, but as I started to prepare to teach my Blazer Jacket class in October I looked around for someone else to be the recipient of a new jacket. My next door neighbor Marissa was happy to oblige - and it's very convenient to have such a nearby fit model! Plus she got this blazer out of it. I have to say that this is one of the best things I have made in a while - due to being meticulous with every step in order to show details to the class via photos and video. Also I decided to up the degree of difficulty with plaid fabric, but I think it's ideal for this jacket and I'm so happy with the result.

I also note that this is one of those items that doesn't photograph all that well, it might look a bit drab but I think that up close it looks so nice and it can be worn with so many different looks.  Here's Marissa wearing her new jacket. It's the Closet Core Jasika Blazer. About half the people in the class made this pattern and the rest made others. I like to have my classes be very general purpose so you can learn basic techniques which apply to any pattern. 

I made a size 8 for her with just some small adjustments in the hip area and lengthening the sleeves. She's tall but the hem was at a good spot so I didn't adjust the length.  

My online class started in October and went for 6 weeks, with Tuesday evenings for instruction and Thursday evenings for sewing time, questions and discussion. That was longer than any other online class I've done but it worked out well since a blazer has a lot more steps than other projects. I really enjoyed it and plan to repeat it again in a couple of months. I've done this class both in person and now online and while they are different both are a lot of fun and have different pros and cons. Here's a quick video with some snippets from the class - I'm learning to use iMovie and now you can't stop me :)   If it doesn't have the play button if you click on it, then you will go to the Flickr page where you can view. 

You can see she is a bit taller than I am, maybe 4 inches? I'm wearing my Pauline Alice Saler blazer which is one of my most frequently worn jackets, that color is my favorite.

Here's a look on the dress form. 

This fabric is 100% wool and I think it's been in my stash for more than 20 years?  Is that even possible? I know I bought it way back when I was working in the corporate world and we wore suits a lot, but I just never sewed it up so it stayed with me - across a couple of moves and occasionally I would pull it out to make sure it didn't have any moth holes. I am 95% sure I bought it at Stone Mountain and I used about half of what there was to make this jacket so I still have a piece remaining. I just might make this same jacket for myself. It's really lightweight and not at all itchy, yet has the perfect press ability and non-wrinkle tendency of a high quality wool. 

For the class I also made another blazer from a new Butterick pattern, which made me long for my Burda jacket patterns - more to come when I post about the Butterick. Although with that project I did  try out VikiSews patterns to make pants to go with it and they were great so it was a productive project in the end. 

I hope the video is entertaining - let me know what you think and also if you are interested in joining in a blazer class in the next couple of months. It's been a happy side effect of this pandemic that I've started these online classes and had the chance to meet and interact with people who I might have known as names in a comment here or in IG. 

This has definitely been a year of making some fun things for friends - I plan to do a year-end post so I will mention all those then. Meanwhile I'm so happy to be wearing a few of the coats I made last year as things here in N. California are very good (fingers crossed it stays that way) and we are mostly out and about with precautions. 

I've made a few holiday-ish items for the season including what I think will be the Burda top of the winter, so I'll post those next week.  

Until then, Happy Holidays and take care,

Beth