In which we start work on the jacket. We're making the whole thing in one go, so grab yourself a sammich and let's get cracking on this.
Starting with the first version of this by seeing what alterations I want to make to this.
One: changing the trim to the same as the black and gold the cape has. Doing this by adding 1/4" to any side that has trim. That should give enough room to cleanly sew in the trim.
Two: adding a flap to one side of the jacket so that it can be secured without completely zipping it up or whatever. Why? Because I don't want to be constantly tugging at the jacket because the cape is pulling it all over the place.
Three: Going to button down the epaulets to maybe make them look nicer. Not a huge fan of them as is.
Four: Upgrade with nicer buttons. Not really an alteration per se, but I have newer buttons that match the vest.
For the record, this is McCall's M7616. It's a fairly straightforward,
simple outfit with one slight exception (that we will get to in a
minute).
First, cut out all your pieces. Fashion fabric, interfacing, lining--all of it. Iron out as much of the wrinkles as you can. Not going to lie to you--this is such a tedious step. You cut out a lot of stuff for the pants, sure, but cutting out the jacket makes you wonder where some of these pieces are going.
A whole passel of fabric. Can you believe we're going to end of up using all of that? But now to the jigsaw puzzle part of the program.
First, fuse interfacing to fabric. There are a lot of mirrored pieces here--and the interfacing only has fusible webbing on one side--so it's convenient to make a corduroy sammich and just batch press them.
Use the muslin to protect the iron. Also, DO NOT do the sandwich thing if your fusible interfacing is double-sided. For extremely obvious reasons that totally has never happened to the author, ever.
Now that all of the pieces are prepped, we can get going on some actual sewing. Start with the front and side front fashion fabric pieces and stay stitch between the darts to reinforce the area. (For right now we are only worrying about the front facing fashion fabric. Like with the pants, the lining is done separately, later.)
Matching up the notches as a guide, pin the side fronts to two of the front pieces (i.e. the pieces that have the interfacing). Baste. Stitch.
Little crinkled because it's fresh off the machine, but there's the jacket front!
Now for the backside. Get the tail pieces. Mark the pivot point (i.e. the size pattern you're using) and stitch the corner to reinforce.
Then stay stitch the inner arc to reinforce. (Lotta reinforcing in this.)
Now stitch the back seams together and you have your tails!
Stitch the side backs to the main back. This is it. This is the worst/most frustrating step in the entire pattern. So don't feel bad if you're doing this and have to go at it more than once to get the pieces smooth. First time I put this pattern together I think it took me the better part of an hour, so seriously, don't feel bad.
Sew the yoke to the newly assembled back. Then attach the front pieces to the yoke.Voila! Starting to really look like a jacket now.
Sidebar: Yoke: to join a thing. Proto-Indo-European yugóm. Cognate with yoga, but not the homophone yolk.
Yolk comes from an old English word geolca --literally yellow part of the egg. Curiously, the term for the white part of the egg, albumen, has mostly fallen out of usage in favor of its pragmatic translation: egg white. Pragmatic translation. Not literal. Literal translation would be more like "white glue." Kinda gross, but I've also had to clean dried egg white off a counter before and 100% get it.
If (for some reason) you're following along with the pattern's
instructions, you'll notice I'm going slightly out of order here. That's
because I'm skipping ahead slightly so I can get the jacket to a point
where it can be hung up (and out of harm's way). Again, there isn't a
dedicated space for this sort of thing so the sooner something can be
safely stored, the better. Also, we've established I have a cat and that cat insists on laying on everything.
Time to make the bars for the grommets. Sew the bars together, inside out, leaving at least a one inch gap so it can be turned right side out without ripping something. It doesn't really matter where the gap is, so long as it's not right next to a corner.
Use a blunt something-or-other to push out the corners. As pictured, the backend of a fine paintbrush works wonderfully. Once that's all set, press the strips to get them nice and flat and rectangular.
Slipstitch both strips closed. Ha! And here you thought there wouldn't be any hand stitching. Well, I was surprised there was hand stitching this.
Pin straps to jacket back. Edgestitch in place. Now get out the grommets. Ha, just kidding. We don't do that until the very end. You know, when it's nigh impossible to fix a mistake. No pressure!
Stay stitch around the collar to reinforce and hold the seams flat. In a minute here, this is going to be shoving a lot of layers through the machine and it's going to need all the help it can get.
So, the collar. Wrong sides together, baste the collar together.
Right sides together, with the collar sandwiched between. It takes some wrangling to get all the points lined up without causing huge wrinkles. But it's do-able. I swear. Not anywhere as hard as that stupid side back. Just line the points up, then keep pinning the fabric in the middle until everything is flat and secured.
Baste. Sew. Trim. Yeah!
Fold collar band down and baste around edge of the collar and band.
Now sew the collar band (the piece that doesn't flare out) to the jacket, again matchimg darts. Hey! A collar!
Now as much fun as it would be to stop there and just have some sleeveless fighter red mage, I already did that with white mage a while back. So! Let's sew the sleeves!
Sew epaulets wrong side together. This looks and feels completely wrong, but will make sense in half a sec. I swear.
Slipstitch top part of both sleeves. Continually surprised at how much hand stitching is involved in this, but this slipstitching will make it much easier to fit the sleeve to the epaulet.
Pin epaulets to sleeve tops, using the slip stitch to finesse the fit. Baste. Stitch.
Heeeey, it's the raw jacket! Everything from here forward it just making it look nice.
With that in mind, it's time to make the jacket lining. Which for the most part is just like the steps above, except you don't need to worry about the collar nor making the back bars. Also more slippery, what with it being lining.
Ah, sorry. We're at the point of this where it's difficult to tell
what's going on. Anyway, place the jacket and lining--right sides
together--and sew at neckline.
Trim and fold down.
Ta-da! Just tack sew the sleeve lining to the jacket at the arm pits and sleeve ends to hold it in place
Now for trim. It's the same trim as used on cape.
Line up and pin all the edges of the jacket. Yes. All of it.
First trim the cuffs, since they're smaller and theorhetically simplier. Separately, fold under the jacket and lining edges by 1/4" (cm). Then sandwich the trim between them (just like with the cape). Dig the invisible thread back out and sew all three layers together.
"But wait--", you mutter. "Why bother trimming the cuffs if you're just going to wear gloves over top of them?" Easy.
1. The cuffs have to be finished SOME way. Might as well be in a way that matches the rest of the jacket.
2. You will have to take the gloves off at some point and the cuff ends will be visable. If you're anything like me, thst is a detail that will absolutely eat at you every time you go to eat a bite or go take a break.
3. THE MAIN REASON: this gives you two opportunities to "practice" sewing the trim before getting to the main piece. Any small mistakes won't matter much and if you want to fiddle around with it, it's much less risky to do so.
To do the rest of the trim, first the outer stitches on the collar need to be undone. This is fairly easy, as most of them are just basting stitches. Actually oddly satisfying to pull out.
And now pin the trim into place. Again, yes, all of it. I actually started at the back, as it seemed the least conspicuous place.
 |
| A second pair of eyes is always helpful. |
But yes, same thing as before. Fold edges in to hide them. Sammich trim between them. Sew using the clear thread.
That took a hot minute, but it's a nice touch of gold that looks even better in person. Very tasteful.
Now lets guild the hell out of this lily.
These are matching buttons to what is on the vest, only slightly larger. Use the pattern to line up where they go and tack sew them into place. Do the same on both sides.
Also pinned down the epaulets by tack sewing the button to the sleeve. I think it looks better. YMMV.
And NOW to insert the grommets. As you can see, it's made of two parts: the flat washer and another piece with a stem sticking up (creatively called "the stem"). The washers go on the bottom side of the fabric, but it's easier to mark proper placement with them. Go ahead and pin them into place according to the pattern.
For the record, there is a tool you can buy to quickly install grommets. However, it's expensive and totally not necessary. Let me show you.
First, take your stem pieces and snip tiny cuts in the stem. The metal itself is rather thin and a regular pair of scissors should be able to cut through handily.
 |
Free inside! One jagged metal Krusty-O!
|
Then cut open a hole for the stem piece to fit through. Fabric always stretches a bit, so keep the hole on the small side.
Slip the stem in from the front side of the fabric, then place the washer on top of the stem. Squeeze the pieces together as tightly as they can go without crushing the grommet. Often you will hear a satisfying
click.
Lastly, bend the edges of the stem down so that they lay flat and won't snag the surrounding garment. You can probably use your fingers for this, but pliers work just as well and now you're less likely to cut your finger. Yes, you can see blood on a red outfit. No, I will not be elaborating.
And there you go! One very professional looking hole.
Now do that five more times. Then all that's left to do is grab the ribbon and tulle from a previous step and lace it through the grommets all pretty like and secure with the tulle bow.
And there you go! Holy cow, an entire jacket start to finish. GG. I'm exhausted folks and frankly, it's a miracle if any of this is even semi-coherent. But it's done and looks great!
Next time: Time to finish up the cape and attach it to the mantle. I see a lot of whip stitching in my future...
Material Directory
Trim, buttons: Mood Fabrics
Pattern McCall's M7616: Simplicity.com
Grommets: Joann Fabrics Your local sewing shop, I hope
Current background music: Alex Boychuk. "Awake." Outrun the Sun.
