My progress has not been stellar in making the pieces for the Pattern Review wardrobe contest in fact the deadline has been and gone with only three garments made. I had such high hopes of making six garments in six weeks. Oh well there is clearly more in my life than just sewing.
I finished a top the first week of the contest whilst away for the weekend in Westport. Must dig it out of the wardrobe, iron it and take a picture - maybe even produce a blog post as it was a new to me pattern company. Then the last weekend of February I made another pair of Megan Nielsen Flint trousers (also not blogged - maybe next week). Then my Issey Miyake jacket took me two weekends to finish (and as long to produce a blog post). That left two blouses and a pair of trousers to make in a week. This was never going to happen as on average I can make a garment per week and the trousers needed to be made in a less precious trial fabric before I made the "good pair".
As the pieces of the six in six wardrobe came from my 2018 travel wardrobe plans (apart from this jacket and the Megan Nielsen Flint trousers) I will finish the garments and maybe even do a post in the spirit of the wardrobe contest. I am normally quite motivated by a deadline but neither the wardrobe contest nor the match your shoes contest provided enough deadline incentive for me to finish on time to enter.
I was slightly distracted last weekend by new fabric purchases. As well as finishing the buttons and buttonholes on my IM jacket I also made two tops but with the newly purchased fabric not part of the travel wardrobe. Oops - so much for sewing with a plan. Although tenuous I could possibly incorporate one or both of these tops into my travel wardrobe!
The finished garment
I did think that this would be a good Summer garment but as we are starting to head into Autumn I paired it with more trans-seasonal clothing.
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| Preparing to fly away |
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| Ok when unbuttoned |
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| Not sure about the extra fabric folds when buttoned |
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| The back with the little sticky out bit at the bottom of the centre back seam |
How fortuitous the jacket goes with a dress from my travel wardrobe.
The fabric
This is a Liberty Murray loopback sweatshirting in design Poppy's Patchwork colourway B from
The Fabric Store.
The fabric was bought last year and I really loved the colours but now it is made into a garment I am a bit ho hum about it. Will let the jacket have a rest in the wardrobe and see if the love comes back.
The sewing pattern
Vogue 2056 is a single sized (14) old Issey Miyake pattern copyrighted 1988. The pattern is for a skirt, shorts and top. I felt, in 2018, the top had more of an outerwear look to it than something I would put under a jacket. The top is described as
very loose fitting with front, back, long sleeves and collar cut-in-one and stitched hems.
The Sewing Workshop also produced a version of this top as the Origami Blouse which I also have in my pattern stash. This pattern has the added advantage of being multi-sized but I wanted to make the original Miyake version so persevered with a few alterations.
The pattern alterations
There is plenty of room in the body of this jacket (54" at the bust) so the changes I made were for style.
First off I traced the single pattern piece which is the back, front and sleeve onto a light non woven sew-in interfacing, with the seam allowance also marked. Then I pinned the pattern together to make it easier to visualise the garment to make the changes I wanted.
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| Dorothy modelling the pinned pattern piece |
I did the pattern tracing and pinning many months before the alterations were made but I had written myself an aide memoire which was pinned to Dorothy for safe keeping.
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| How to alter the pattern to remove the 1980's shoulders and get more room at the hip |
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| The altered pattern |
I have annotated the altered pattern piece with the changes made and these can be more easily read if the photo is enlarged.
First off the shoulders - unsurprising for a 1980's pattern the shoulder dart stuck out way past my actual shoulders. As a soft jacket I didn't want to wear shoulder pads and a dart sagging over the top of my arm is not a good look. Also whilst the extreme shoulder trend seems to be starting to make a comeback it really isn't my style. To combat the excess I removed 2" of width from the shoulders, using a dart down the back and a tuck in the upper half of the jacket front (photo left side). These are changes (1) and (2) on the pattern piece.
The lower half of the jacket front needs the same 2" inches removed as the top half otherwise the seam lines won't match. However extra width at the garment hem is of benefit rather than loosing the 2". So at roughly bust level the 2" was removed with a dart and at garment hem (hip level) the dart opened up to add width. This was achieved by cutting down from the seam line and up from the hem creating a pivot point just above waist level. So closing up the dart at the top automatically opened up the dart at the bottom. This is change (3) on the photo of the pattern piece.
The sleeves were narrowed by removing 1" at the hem, from each side, blended back to nothing at the notch (about where the lengthen/shorten line is).
Once I finished the garment and took it for an outing it became obvious that the sleeves were too short. It is less apparent when your arms are by your side but when moving about the sleeves slide to three quarter length up my arms. I think this is related to the way the top of the jacket front is stitched to the front facing to create the tuck/pleat of fabric out of the sleeve as well. To combat this I added a 2" cuff and lengthened the pattern piece for the future by adding at the hem rather than the lengthen/shorten line. This is change (5) on the pattern piece.
When I added length to the sleeves I also reduced the width at the hem by continuing the angle of the seam to the new hem length. The photos of the finished garment make it look as though the sleeves are too long now but I am not conscious of this when wearing the jacket.
All of the seam lines had to be trued up once the pattern alterations had been made.
The seam allowance was changed from 5/8" to 3/8". This is my preferred seam allowance and was fortunate because with the removal of 2" in the shoulder dart the back neck band (sticking out rectangular shape in the middle of the photo on the left hand side) interferes with the back neck edge.
So what would I do differently? The only thing I can't change in the finished garment and doesn't work unless you wear the jacket buttoned all the time is the centre back seam. As can be seen from the pattern piece the centre back seam has a significant change of direction at the waist. When the top is buttoned this angle is pulled out as the garment sits close to the body but when unbuttoned it sticks out in a strange and unattractive way. I haven't worked out what the solution is to this problem and will need to leave myself a note on the pattern piece in case I make the garment again.
I have also added 1.5" at the hem at centre back tapering to nothing towards centre front as I think the back length is a bit short. Change (4) on the pattern piece. This new length is for the benefit of any future makes and not something I did for this jacket.
If I ever wore this as a blouse I would need to do something to raise the neckline. Unless I wanted to display my bra to the world and I feel quite strongly that no matter how attractive a bra is they are called under garments for a reason.
The sewing
All seams were sewn first with a 3/8" seam allowance, then overlocked for a neat inside and then top stitched. For once I actually followed the pattern instructions, in fact you can see them close at hand as I am pinning the garment pieces together in the photo below.
The actual mechanics of the sewing is pretty straight forward. It is the origami folding that requires some mental gymnastics. The sleeve seam is also the seam across the bodice front to join the top and bottom of the front together. You need to concentrate and make sure you match up the appropriate tailors tacks. Don't skimp on the transference of the patterns markings to the fabric or you will be lost. Even with careful marking I am not sure I stitched the front to the facing as intended to make the folds as my version does not fall as attractively as the pattern envelope suggests.
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| Origami folding the jacket to match the sleeve and front bodice seam |
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| A closer view of the sleeve pinned together |
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| The front bodice pinned and the mind bending clip to turn the angle into a straight line |
I started off using my Bernina 830 but it decided to have one too many mental breakdowns so I put it in the naughty corner and then trecked it into town to the Bernina dealer. There is enough wrong with it that they shipped it back to head office in Wellington who are apparently downloading its log and sending it back to Switzerland for analysis. So out came the trusty 1953 Singer Featherweight, which has never had a mental breakdown, it just sews along through thick fabric and thin.
My trusty Featherweight has the buttonhole attachment which everyone raves about but I had never used. With the absence of my 830 and the need to finish the garment I got it out of hiding and pressed it into service. A few practice buttonholes were needed to get the hang of how the buttonholer worked but once again it worked perfectly. Every buttonhole the same. No tantrums because some bits of the jacket are thicker than others. It was easy to go around each buttonhole twice (or as many times as I wanted). The nerves were more present at the point of cutting the buttonholes open (I was good and used my buttonhole cutter rather than the quick unpick).
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| Three perfect buttonholes |
Given the colours in the jacket I choose to use three different (in size and colour) buttons. This seemed like a really good idea at the time but now I am not so sure. Why does it look so different when the buttons are sewn on? They looked great when I was playing with options.
The only interfacing used is a 3" strip applied to the front facings to support the buttons and button holes.
I enjoyed a meditative bit of hand stitching to finish the hems and hold the front facing to the garment front. The pattern instructions have you machine stitch these but I didn't want the line around the garment.
The outfit of the day
Not an outfit of the day but I did think I should take a picture of my Issey Miyake jacket with my Issey Miyake Rock Sandals. When thinking about which outfit I should pair this jacket with I immediately thought of the AGF Bloom Montage knit dress used in the original
Rock sandal post. From the distance of memory the colours in this dress seemed ideal. When put together the colours of the dress are just that little bit off so they really clash. Even my beloved thought this was a less than stellar outfit and his colour choices can be decidedly iffy. Here is the photographic evidence of my never to be worn together again outfit.
