Its got
quilting, a hood, snaps, vintage hot pink velvet ribbon and it’s made from
shiny silver leopard print taffeta……… ack!
What a pity
it’s not my size!
Looks good
on Miss C though.
Miss C has
had a recent growth spurt which just happen to coincide with a bitterly cold
gust of winter, so my plans of squeezing her into last years jacket went out
the window faster than Jack Frost came in.
While we
are not a particularly outdoorsy family, no camping, hiking or fishing happens
much ‘round here, we do walk pretty much everyday, so a warm jacket is pretty
vital to our winter wardrobe.
So while I
had no intentions to do any seriously hard concentrating type of sewing this
season, I realised that I did need to get something together for her. Or buy
something, which didn’t seem nearly as appealing.
Here are
the deets
Pattern
Vintage
McCalls pattern, dated 1977. Size 8.
I have had
this one in the stash for quite some time.
It is
described as an unlined jacket with raglan sleeves, hood and front button
fastening.
I did have
to do quite a bit of work to turn this into a warm jacket but it was a great
shell to start from.
Fabric
Outer
layer: nylon leopard print taffeta (bought for $2 m from Spotlight)
Inner
layer: premium, thick polar fleece, in baby pink of course
Lining:
mystery shiny stuff from the stash, again in pink.
Hood
lining: silver mesh, long time stash resident, circa late last century.
Cuffs:
mystery rib knit from the stash.
Trim: vintage
hot pink nylon velvet ribbon for the hood and hem and silver snaps for closures.
.
Sewing
Notes
I think I
have trumped myself on last year’s jacket, which only got a couple of outings.
This took quite a while of thinking and deliberating and while not necessarily
hard to sew, everything needed to be done accurately and in the right order. I
tossed around different fastening and pocket ideas but in the end went easy on
myself and chose the simplest options to sew.
I cut the
body, sleeves and hood from the taffeta and polar fleece fabrics and quilted
these together and then treated this as a single piece of fabric.
I cut the
lining from the same pattern pieces, sewed these together and then used this to
underline the jacket, so it is not really a true lining but does the job of
hiding all those messy seams.
I needed to
draft a back facing for the neck, the pattern had a different finish as it was
not originally lined, and I cut a third layer, the mesh fabric, for the hood
lining.
The velvet
ribbon was used to trim the hood and jacket hem and I made some pocket flaps to add to the patch pockets.
I used
metal snaps instead of buttons and buttonholes and used some grey ribbing to
finish the sleeves instead of the original elastic casing.
While it
does seem a bit of a hodge podge of fabrics and textures, some bits are new,
some bits are old, I think it has come together quite nicely. All up, and not
considering the value of my time, this jacket cost just under $30 to make.
Which I think would be about half the price of something similar in RTW so I
will count that as a win!
And I got
this finished just in the nick of time for Pattern Review’s outerwear contest.
Yay me!
While I did
enjoy making this, the project has sucked all of my sewing mojo out of me, so I
expect I will be floundering a bit sewing wise for a while. I don’t have
anything that NEEDS to be made right now so things could be quite for a while!