I know what you are thinking : “Gosh, that woman has been sewing this purple jacket forever!”
Well, not really. It only took me a week to finish it, but describing the process takes much longer than process itself! I even wore the jacket a few times ( one of them to the playgroup ) and my incandescent purple self was sticking out in the crowd like a sore thumb :)
Ah, I was feeling so bright on that rainy day!
So today I am going to sum up my purple jacket post series. Previous posts are here:
Burda 7579
Puzzling discovery
Ode to a pocket
Oh yuk!! ( a brief life of an ugly collar )
What happened next
So since I made my sleeve vents and they came out rather nice and sharp, I finished the sleeves and proceeded as usual to set them in.
My usual is:
Two rows of stitching
Gathering
…and then taking a long judgmental look
That looks like a too much cap sleeve ease situation to me. The cap ease is 3.5 cm and for my denim it could be too much to handle. But I’ll give it a go!
Here is what “a go” looks like. So you don’t accuse me in not giving a pattern a fair chance!
Bloody awful. Rip the sleeve out and start again. I did a sneaky alteration – just shifted the sleeve cap’s edge out a bit ( increased it’s seam allowance ) at the shoulder notch, tapering it to the front and back notches.
If every cm of your sleeve length is very important to you, don’t try this dirty trick at home, do the pattern alterations first. I did it because I decided to omit the shoulder pads and since I’ll have about 1 cm of excess length intended for shoulder pads, I can easily sacrifice it.
Sleeve looks much happier after my intervention. Still need some careful steaming, but not too bad.
Now the sleeve head support, because nobody likes a meek jacket shoulder:
Two strips of thin padding stitched down 1 cm from one edge 
And hand stitched in place to the shoulder seam.
After this there was boring part of lining sewing and jacket bagging, and then there was this.
Right sleeve looks bizarre, because my dress form has narrow shoulders, so it just kind of hangs off the side!
Well, to sum up.
Burda 7579 jacket pattern required:
- Collar shape alteration
- Adding sleeve vents ( optional but cool )
- Added lining ease ( compulsory )
- I also re-drafted lining pattern at vents and jacket fronts, because I don’t want to slip stitch it ( I have to do this on every commercial pattern’s jacket lining )
- Pockets opening narrowed and moved further apart ( compulsory )
- Sleeve cap ease was reduced by half
- Change back vents draft ( the way it was done would make them too bulky )
- Omit back tab ( I don’t like details at waist on myself )
NOW I have a TNT ( tried and tested ) pattern. I might make my next jacket out of wool and silk blend with some subtle lurex through it ( oh so yummy ).
And this project also reminded me why I prefer making my own patterns.
Shall I add this review to Pattern Review? Would anybody be interested, I wonder?
