Archive for the 'Jackets' Category

Published on November 30, 2010 in ABdPM and Jackets. 1 Comment

Wow, polyester, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways: There’s the permanent factory crease down the center of your yardage that no amount of ironing will remove; the fact that you hate all thread tensions known to humans (and their machines); the way you equally hate all needles; not to mention the lovely way you perforate — permanently — everywhere a pin is placed.

There’s more, but I haven’t got all day.

I know; I did the wrong thing. I chose my lining for the color, not because it was going to be a good lining. It’s green, a lovely, leafy green which just happened to coordinate with the buttons I intended to use to close this coat.

Top to bottom: The tweedy wool, hardly visible; a strand of glass beads once considered for the closure; the now-rejected (sob!) green buttons; the rejected springs (ditto); oval elastic (still on); solid black twill, since rejected, originally meant for contrast; and the infamous poly lining.

Can I just mention how much I wish I had gone for a boring black, white, or ivory heavy acetate coat lining? And then move on? Live and learn; it’s the only way.

ABdPM has you use the same pattern pieces as the jacket for the lining; they just have you cut the body pieces shorter. A lot shorter, but this may have something to do with the way they finish the hem. More about that later.

I decided, though, that I really didn’t want to simply use the jacket pattern pieces for the lining, so I made the following changes:

cut the back yoke and the lower back pattern pieces all-in-one, just as I did for the interlining
added a box pleat to the center back, to allow for ease of movement in the upper back especially
cut the sleeves (which aren’t curved where the back seam is joined) all-in-one
cut the backs and fronts 3/4ths of an inch longer than the interlining, and the sleeves 1/2 inch longer

I traced my own lining pattern, building from the ABdPM pattern, and adding these changes to my new tracings. I might actually make this jacket again, so the extra effort is worth it; this jacket is actually pretty simple to make, once you know how.

I edge-stitched the box pleat, on the wrong side of the lining, of course. Doing this will help it to fall back into place as I move:

Satiny stuff photographs badly, especially in the hands of such an amateur as I am. This actually looks quite a bit better in person than it does in the photo, though I was never able to fully resolve the poly issues chronicled above.

When it comes to coat pockets, I’m all about utility, and I like lots of them. This led to one other change in the lining. As I’ve made it, this is kind of a swing coat, and putting pockets into the lining might have weighed the jacket down and inhibited some of that pizazz.

Instead, I sewed two self-fabric loops into the lining at the bottom of the armholes. My cell phone will go into this pouch under my left arm, out of the way, and not pulling on the jacket at all:

The picture’s not great, but you can see the silver hooks clipped onto the loops above the floating pocket. This pouch was kind oaf a quick and dirty mini-project, mostly to determine what length the loops should be. I may make a more polished one later. A “secret” wallet/pocket will attach to the other set.

If I ever have the misfortune of losing my bag in a city, I want three things: my cell phone; a twenty dollar bill; and my transit pass. I like having them all clipped into my coat.

I thought I’d bag the lining, since I’d never done that before, but quickly abandoned the idea, since the jacket is so bulky I’d have had to leave an entire side seam open to turn it. No matter; inserting the lining is very straightforward, and it’s almost done. Hurray!

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Rant alert –nothing that follows has anything to do with ABdPM, or this particular project (except tangentially). Read at your peril.

Adding to my polyester woes was the fact that I bought this fabric at JoAnn’s, and it suffered from all the usual JoAnn quality issues. I was laying out the pattern on the first cut when I realized that there was an oil blotch, very subtle, but very present, about 15 inches into the cut. OK, I kept cool – I understand JoAnn quality, so I’d bought an extra half yard just in case there were issues. I figured I could work around it.

So I changed the layout to work around the stain, but foolishly cut the front and sleeves before actually pinning the back (which is on a fold, of course). Then I realized that I had left an inch too little fabric. Aaaaargh!

I went back to JoAnn’s and discovered, amazingly, that they had gotten another bolt of the same stuff in. (Glutton for punishment much??) There was a spray of small oil-like stains on the start of this bolt, too, which I made the clerk cut off, but the piece I brought home appears to be fine — except for all the poly issues mentioned above.

I try to avoid JoAnn like the plague, but when color matching is an issue, sometimes I’m stuck. It’s never a good thing.

ABdPM 20013: Miscellaneous Report

Published on November 27, 2010 in ABdPM and Jackets. 3 Comments

Things are progressing here — the jacket’s got pockets:

I don’t like raw edges on the insides of my patch pockets, so I lined these with a thin, slippery polyester. And I interfaced them as well, because that will help to keep them from “pooching” over the years. Then I turned them, and applied the finished pockets to the jacket fronts.

These aren’t exactly the pockets specified by ABdPM. Their pockets have two bound edges, stitched from the contrast that I’m supposed to be using for one side of my hood (you can see this in the photo below).

I know, too small, but maybe you get the idea. The contrast trim is just a thin edge on the pocket opening.

Instead, I used the exterior wool fabric, and made standard welts for the opening. Here’s the welt on the back side, before I stitched it in place:

This fabric ravels very easily; with another wool, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to finish the edges. The welt fabric is a true rectangle, but I took this picture at an angle in a (vain) attempt to avoid the shadow you see at the bottom of the picture. Got to work on those photo skills one day. Not this week, however.

My pockets are larger than the ABdPM versions — about a half an inch larger all around. ABdPM’s pockets are pretty small; big enough for hands, probably, but mine had to be large enough so that I could get my pocket camera in and out with no fuss.

I used to be quite good at making welts and bound buttonholes, but those days are gone, and, once again, I’m grateful for this lovely tweedy-twill which hides imperfections very nicely. The welts nearly match. Close enough, as they say, for government work — but far from perfection.

On other fronts (literally) I’ve been debating the closures. When I first saw the ABdPM photograph, I was thrilled because I mistakenly assumed that the jacket was closed with springs:

Yeah, only a hardware junkie could have leapt to that conclusion. Those are actually beads strung on elastic, which loops over four assorted buttons.

I liked the hardware concept a lot though, so I picked up a couple of springs. They were too chrome-y, and maybe too heavy, as well. Then I dropped in at the beading store and picked up some heavy black wire, which I wrapped around one of the springs. Better, but not right. Then I made a spring-like structure out of the black wire and added flat, rectangular, glass beads to the ends. Not quite right, either. The black wire coils completely disappeared into the tweed which just looked strange, rather than interesting.

Here are the three incarnations (in reverse order from the way I’ve described them, sorry):

All have been rejected (and you might say “good riddance”!), but I think I have a solution, which I’ll save for later. I’m afraid that I really do want a kooky closure, so actual buttons-and-tabs or buttons-and-buttonholes are out of the question.

Related:

ABdPM 20013: The Hood

Published on November 22, 2010 in ABdPM and Jackets. 3 Comments

Once I’d fit the jacket, and cut out the interlining, it was time to tackle the “exterior” fabric: the wool the world would see.

This pattern calls for “serge” or “”twill” (it’s not clear to this English reader which) for either the inside or outside of the hood and the band that extends down the front of the jacket (they’re cut all-in-one). My French isn’t good enough to figure out exactly which piece was which, although I think it would be pretty obvious once it came time to do the final assembly. I’d decided, though, that I wanted two layers of my main fabric for the hood, so that’s what I did instead of using the contrast.

Here’s the hood, assembled, with the front edges of the hood and the front of the jacket bands to the right. The bands are folded back because this is one looong piece.

Because I wasn’t sure exactly how this section was going to attach to the rest of the jacket, I probably made the front band a little longer than necessary; I won’t know for sure until the final assembly. At this point, I’m supposed to have closed the bottom seam, and topstitched all around, but that’s waiting until I confirm this piece’s true size. I think I’d have wanted to do that topstitching last, in any case, after the jacket’s all together.

The hood has an elastic drawstring, with which I did battle for hours. I can’t even imaging what all went wrong: Attack of the stupids, maybe? I did make life a little difficult for myself when I insisted on putting a protective bead on the elastic. , inserted the elastic all wrong, forgot the bead and toggle . . . and so on. Here’s what the set-up looked like:

There’s the elastic (I cut it to the precise length of the part of the hood that holds the drawstring, so the hood, which also forms an over-sized collar, could be worn without any cinching at all), the lock toggle, and the bead. The casing is along the hood seam; I’m not sure exactly how ABdPM meant it to be made, but I just topstitched on either side of the hood seam, forming a channel.

The problem is that the elastic doesn’t go the whole length of the hood; it begins in the middle of the hood’s curve, goes along the top, and then exits through a buttonhole a few inches from the hood’s front edge. I did every dumb thing possible while trying to thread this elastic. The first issue was classic: There are four layers of wool forming this channel, and I laboriously threaded the elastic up through one that didn’t open out through the buttonhole. D’oh! And it got worse after that . . .

I don’t even remember how I solved this problem in the end, but it involved making an opening in the hood lining seam, knotting the ends of the elastic (but not so much that it couldn’t be pulled through the channel), and somehow resulted in having the bead and toggle where they belonged on the outside of the hood, and the ends of the elastic stitched to the seam allowance in the inner hood, and with the seam closed up neatly. Wool is so forgiving!

I love using this bead, because there’s no chance the toggle will be lost. This means, I hope, that I’ll never have to think about this process again.

ABdPM marks the buttonhole perpendicular to the hood’s edge, but, instead, I set it over, and parallel to, the hood seam (only on the outside hood, of course, and before I assembled the pieces), and then just opened the seam where the buttonhole was centered. This made a lot more sense to me, and was much easier to do over the thick wool layers. I made it as small as possible, and it turned out to be quite neat and tidy.

I did not interline or interface the hood or front bands. I was sure the doubled wool would be the right weight, and I wanted the front bands to drape a bit. They appear to lie over the front of the jacket, so they shouldn’t need extra support.

Cutting both the hood and the hood lining meant that I needed almost three yards of wool; mine was 62 inches wide. It would have been a pretty tight fit, but probably still possible, to get everything from 60 inches, but less width might have gotten problematic. The hood/front band pattern piece, with my +/- 3 inch alteration was 40 inches inches long. That’s one big hood!

ABdPH calls for far less fabric (even allowing for the major change I made); maybe they’re a lot more clever at layout than I am, though my layout sure looked economical. No layouts are included, though, so their scheme remains a mystery.

Related:

ABdPM 20013: Fit and Interlining

Published on November 21, 2010 in ABdPM and Jackets. 6 Comments

From Au Bonheur des Petites Mains, this is the “Veste effet boule, à capuche”, (or “Jacket ball effect, hooded” per Google Translate). I’m a little unclear on exactly what the “ball effect” is, but that’s OK. It’s a jacket with a goofy hood, a fun front closure, and circular pockets.

Because the instructions are in French (or more accurately, because my French is decades old and beyond rusty), figuring out exactly how it’s meant to be put together isn’t the simplest thing. Using Google Translate, and Shams’ helpful glossary, I cobbled up instructions that were more or less comprehensible, if slightly scanty. That was my first step.

The next step was figuring out my size. ABdPM patterns are French, and the sizing is a little different from what I usually encounter. Allow me to correct that: The sizing is a LOT different. Not only do French women not get fat, but apparently they’re not very big, either. And have no busts. And super-slender arms.

So getting used to ABdPM sizing takes a little effort. At 5′2″ and 122 pounds, I needed size 44, except in the shoulders, where I cut the pattern down to nearly the smallest size: 34. (Size 44, by the way is the top of their smaller size range.)

I probably should have tried an FBA in a smaller size, but I’d still have needed the 44 sleeves, and I wanted the fullness of the larger coat body, not to mention that I needed plenty of space for my 37 C+ bust, and without an FBA the larger size was the only way to get it.

The size 44 sleeves fit in the biceps,where they’re snuggest, but come thisclose to being too tight, so that’s definitely something to watch. Overall, I’m pretty small for a North American, and my arms aren’t notably heavy, so these sleeves must be really narrow.

ABdPM patterns are printed on heavy paper (which is wonderful!), so I traced off my chosen size, and cut out the interlining (or underlining, or whatever). No seam allowances are included; they’re completely up to you. I used 5/8th of an inch, which is what I’m most used to. I also made the jacket about three-fourths of an inch longer, before, of course, adding the depth of the hem.

My “exterior” fabric (that’s what ABdPM calls it, and I like that adjective a lot better than the silly term “fashion fabric”) is all wool, but not quite coating weight, so I knew I’d need some fairly serious insulation for winter wear. The interlining is one layer of a thin, drapey poly batt, and one layer of cotton flannel, cobbled together with loose, free-hand quilting.

Yikes! Clumsy stitching and out-of-focus. Just think of the outer layer as an especially fuzzy flannel . . .

I’d never done free-hand quilting on a machine before, and, let me tell you, I did one messy job of it. No matter; the only point was to keep the layers together without stiffening the lining. In that, I succeeded. I do, however, now understand why a quilting shop I stop in at now and then has a huge, computerized quilting machine which is always humming.

Since I was fairly confident of the fit, I used the interlining as a “muslin”, and tweaked the pattern only slightly, in the shoulders, as noted above. This was pretty risky, and may come back to bite me, though, since I’m still not exactly sure how the jacket goes together. I think I know, but let’s just say that the instructions are a little obscure in places. A more prudent sewer would have done a full muslin, but since the jacket’s loose-fitting, and the whole project is an experiment, I was willing to take some chances.

The back of the jacket has a yoke, with a lovely curved seam, but I cut the yoke and lower back all-in-one for the interlining once I realized that the seam was strictly decorative. I didn’t want the bulk in the insulation.

By the way, ABdPM patterns are hugely over-sized; about 9 x 12 inches, or roughly 22 cm by 30 cm. They come in a stiff, nearly cardboard-like envelope, with a photograph of the finished garment, a page of instructions, and the pattern itself. This presentation explains the hefty shipping charge to North America, but the packaging is an aesthetic joy, and a further spur to action. I can hardly keep from drooling every time I see the envelopes on my shelf. Who wouldn’t want to sew something packaged so enticingly?

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