Vogue 1143 Suit - nearing the finish line

Who thought this Vogue suit had disappeared in the black hole of space? That mysterious vortex of unfinished objects which exerts such a powerful pull on the pesky, the difficult, the not completed in the appropriate season.  You know what I mean. The waning days of winter, a scratchy wool skirt or a heavy jacket.  One evening you are happily stitching on your winter creation and it seems a little warm in the house. You open the window and hear some crickets, or maybe catch a scent of orange blossoms just outside. It is spring! or very nearly.  Suddenly that heavy jacket or long sleeve dress holds no appeal.  There is some nice linen calling your name. A shift dress in a bright cotton. Anything but the thing you are working on now but will never wear until fall returns.  So away it goes, maybe in a bin or  bundled up into a bag and shoved into the back of the closet.  Have you been there?

That is exactly what happened to this suit.  While it is not particularly heavy fabric, a lined, belted, long sleeve jacket just didn't do it for me once June arrived here. This jacket sat on one of my dress forms for months. In July the thermometer was hovering around 100º F and I finally folded it up and put all the pieces away in a bin.  Last week I saw a few falling leaves - so it was time to revisit this suit and get it DONE.  Here is a look at the 2 pieces, jacket is put together and just needs it lining and lapel facing. 

I have to say this project confounded me in so many ways but I see some light at the end of the tunnel and have plenty to post about when it is all finished.  I would never have chosen this for myself but last January I made the bold (idiotic) offer to make a Vogue designer pattern chosen by a reader of this blog.  Ruta chose this Vogue 1143 Guy Laroche pattern and while I am very glad she did it was a challenge.  Lots of weird quirks with this pattern plus the frightening idea of pants.   

Just about finished and I hope to have finished outfit photos in the next few weeks.  I need some kind of top to wear with this so I will have to ponder that once the jacket is completed.

Unrelated to the post above, I saw this plant growing next to a wall when taking an early morning walk on vacation in Hawaii. Wonder what it is. Even the random roadside plants are lovely there.

Suit for a Japanese Wedding Part 2

This week I finished the suit that Rita is wearing to her son's wedding in Japan.  Here is the finished jacket and skirt.  As mentioned in the previous post, I used McCall's 5759 for the jacket. While the jacket looks great on Rita, I am not happy with the way it looks on the dress form, the collar sinks a bit and the heavy buttons kind of pull a bit.  The fabric was fantastic to work with.
Hopefully I will get a great photo from the occasion to post.

Rita is an artist and forges metal pieces, so she chose some very unique buttons that are a burnished metal.  This jacket style, with the hidden buttonholes lends itself well to a distinctive button so if anyone has some special buttons they are waiting to use - maybe give this one a try.

Here are a few construction details.  Across the back I put a layer of black muslin which serves to stabilize the shoulders and add a layer so the shoulder pads don't show on the right side of the fabric.  Where the collar and jacket pieces attach, I trimmed and sew down the seam allowances,  also done on the inside collar and jacket facing.

On the inside collar, I did put an extra piece of pellon interfacing on top of the knit fusible interfacing to add a bit more stiffness to the collar.



For the hems I pin up and press a sharp line, then run a basting thread along that line to mark the hem.  I press on a 3" wide piece of armo-weft type interfacing along that hem which gives the hem crease a softer turn, and allows the hem stitches to be perfectly hidden.



For the skirt I used SImplicity 2451, changing the waistband to make it almost straight across instead of curved, and narrowing the waistband by about 3/4" from the top.  

and today's SunnyGal garden photo.   

Vogue 1037 Badgley Mischka suit for Cathy

January settled in gloomy and rainy here in Northern California. OK, not like other parts of the country - but it wasn’t sunny. Perfect weather for some serious sewing, however I really didn’t have any projects on deck. Until my good friend and neighbor Cathy said she needed something to wear to a meeting. She was being inaugurated as this year’s president of the San Francisco Professional Food Society. Cathy has her own company which manufactures kits for making gourmet chocolate truffles and other goodies at home. www.thetrufflekit.com

She wanted a business look, something she can wear again on other occasions and also as separates. We had the idea of a suit in mind, but nothing specific. We shopped for fabric and inspiration at my favorite fabric store, Stone Mountain and Daughter in Berkeley CA, which is filled with fantastic silks, wools, cottons and so many other interesting choices that I have to be very disciplined when I step in the door.

We checked out all the wools and found a plum colored wool crepe. She chose Vogue 1037, a Badgley Mischka suit with pretty portrait collar and three-quarter sleeves.

She needed the suit for the meeting on Wednesday - so time was short.

I couldn’t start until Sunday - and then I went into speed mode. Making a tailored suit in about 3 days is definitely fast, but a nice challenge for a rainy week.

The pattern was one of their designer series - but not as difficult as some of their advanced patterns. I did a flat pattern measurement and cut out a size 16 jacket (which probably compares to a size 10 or 12 in a department store - more on this topic in a future post). The princess seams made it simple to make adjustments on the body after the jacket was basted together. The instructions called for lining all the jacket body pieces with fusible knit interfacing, which I did. I am not sure it was entirely necessary, in most wool jackets I use armo-weft fusible interfacing on the jacket and undercollar, and then fusible knit on the jacket front facings and upper collar. However since this was a different style - more like a 2 piece dress than a tailored jacket, I went with their instructions.

I have noticed that some fusible knit interfacing behaves better than others, perhaps it is the brand and I will be doing a test on some of the yardage I have on my shelf. I had to press and steam much more than I expected to get it to fuse properly. If you miss a little spot it can leave a slight bubble impression on the right side of the wool, which has to be repressed. I did get it all fused up and just about gave myself a steam facial in the process. The benefit of the fusible interfacing is that it gives the wool crepe a great weight and body, so that the jacket holds its shape nicely and doesn’t wrinkle at all.

Next I did the welt pockets with flap. For any welt pocket I never look at the pattern instructions, nor use their ridiculous little pattern pieces. I learned to make a welt pocket from Sandra Betzina at The Sewing Workshop in San Francisco some years ago and have used this method more times than I can count.

Next time I do one I will take photos and post. Suffice it to say that almost the LAST step is slicing open the pocket. I have seen a lot of instructions that call for cutting the pocket slit before applying the welt pieces, and that sounds dangerous and could lead to needing a new jacket front piece if it didn’t go well. Or at least a larger pocket than one planned to have. Possibly eliminating the need for a handbag but that is another story.

Once the welt pockets are done on any jacket I feel that I am home free. So the rest was just sew - sew - sew as fast as my little fingers could move. I made the lining from the jacket pieces instead of using the lining pieces in the pattern envelope as I was too lazy to pull them out and the jacket pieces were still at hand. Then I sewed the lining together, turned the jacket inside out on the dress form, and applied the lining, trimming as I pinned to give it the correct shape. Then hand sewed the lining in, and did the buttonholes with my handy-dandy Singer buttonhole attachment. Noisy little bugger but whew it makes great buttonholes. Maybe I could become a sewing hoarder as I bought 2 more of these gizmos last year at a garage sale for a couple of bucks which was a deal as I had seen them on Ebay for upwards of $ 20.

Next I sewed up the skirt. For this I used Simplicity 2564 which has no darts and a shaped waistband. This style is a lot smoother, falls over the waist and hips very nicely. The skirt included with the Vogue 1037 is a very traditional (shall I say old-fashioned) skirt, with front and back darts. So on a whim I used the different skirt pattern and Cathy was really happy with it.

Suit finished by Wednesday morning, with not that many minutes to spare.

She looked great and now has a nice suit that is ready for a lot of occasions.