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Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Another Pattern, Another Muslin


So being as the vintage jeans jacket pattern isn't going to work for the corduroy and minky, I had to find another pattern that required only 1.5 yards of 60" fabric, which severely limits my options. This is the second candidate, and the one I will use, if I can get a couple of kinks worked out.

I made a muslin (out of black fleece and some scraps of houndstooth flannel from my jumper) up yesterday. There are reasons that I rarely cut out and finish sewing anything in one day. For one, the quality of my work suffers as I get frustrated and in a hurry. If I spread things out, and work at them at my leisure, I don't get nearly so upset about things like, oh, redoing the pockets three times before I get it right.

However, this did turn out wearable, and I like it except for a few imperfections that were totally caused by me doing a lined jacket as unlined, without a clear understanding of how that affected the construction and shaping of the pattern pieces. I had to make several "design decisions" like edging the front with bias tape made from the houndstooth. I also lengthened the sleeves, but not quite enough. They need another inch or two. I can eke another inch out by letting out the 1" hem and making some more bias tape to edge the sleeves.

I think it looks cute with the jumper that it matches, too, and the collar gives it a very retro look. The best part, though, is the buttons. They're like giant pound symbols.

McCall's 5007, by the way, appears to have just gone out of print, but Etsy seller backalleydesign has some new and uncut in her store, for very reasonable prices (they are listed in a batch with three other patterns, but when I asked she was willing to break the batch up and sell me only the ones I wanted).

3 comments:

Juliane said...

Love the jacket!

I can't find an email link for you so I'll leave this here for you.

I'm thinking of opening an etsy shop and I wanted your input. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions about your experience there?

And thanks for tagging me. I'm working on that post...Keep sewing!
Juliane

MadeByAmanda said...

Sure, ask away! My email is butterflyblue77(at)yahoo(dot)com

Anonymous said...

Amanda, I popped over from visiting Loweryourfeedogs... anyway. Your doing such a great job sewing... your jacket is really cute! Might I mention that if you have any more of the hoodstooth... you could lengthen your sleeves with that! It would blend right in and look great! I'm always doing things different than what a patterns says! Besides, who is going to know? I used to work at a Fabric store and people would always say things like.... "But, what if I make a mistake?" Straight faced I would look at them and tell them, that the Sewing Police would come to their house and take them away! Sewing for yourself is an individual thing, do what you want and what you like. If it's for you the only one you have to please is yourself! Be creative!
Jean C.