Crackpot Quilters’ Blog

My second sewing project of the new year was another tailored wool jacket. I finished it in January. The fabric is an olive green wool twill from the depths of the cedar chest. There are tiny bits of tan and rust in the twill. They’re not visible from a distance, but they give the fabric some depth. I think this kind of very pronounced twill is called cavalry twill. I ignored the part of the pattern that said, “Not suitable for obvious diagonals.”

As with the gray jacket below, alterations were the major work of this project. There is not a single piece in this jacket that is made from the original pattern. That includes things such as the collar and the collar stand. I made two non-fitting changes to the pattern. First, I decided that the collar was too large for a short person so I decreased the depth of the collar. I did this by making a 1/4 inch fold lengthwise in the collar pattern. Then I straightened the cutting line from the neck edge to the collar point. If I had just cut off 1/4 inch from the outer edge of the collar, the collar point would have been farther from the lapel edge. The other thing I did was to change the way the undercollar was cut. The pattern called for it to be cut in one piece on the bias. To keep the bias direction the same at both collar points, I cut the under collar in two pieces, with a seam at the center back. I cut the interfacing for the undercollar the same way.

The front, undercollar and collar stand were interfaced with fusible Armo Weft. All the other pieced were underlined with French Fuse. The back stay is poly cotton. The shoulder pads are four layers of poly fleece and the sleeve heads are lamb’s wool. As with the gray jacket, the roll line was not marked. So I had to make my own. It is taped with twill tape.

This pattern called for a sort of crescent moon-shaped collar stand that went from one roll line around the back to the other roll line. It does not show at all. The pattern called for the upper (inner) side (toward the body) to be interfaced. That did not make sense to me. The under (outer) collar stand is the part that holds up the collar and keeps it from collapsing onto the jacket back as the collar is folded back. So I interfaced the under (outer) part of the collar stand.

The pattern also called for the darts to be topstitched. Since I didn’t want to emphasize them, I omitted the topstitching.

The jacket was lined with a poly charmeuse. The pattern and color look nice with the wool, but that stuff was nasty ugly frustrating not as nice to sew with as the wool. I’ve been spoiled by the wool.

Here is the pattern. It’s from 1998.

Look at the tall, thin models. I do not look like that. But I think my photographer was kneeling down so the lower part of my body looks a little larger than it does when I look in the mirror. After all, my eyes are higher than the, er, lower part of my body.

Hello, crackpots!

Well, we disappeared from the internets for a week or so while I worked out some kinks on our web hosting, but we appear to be back online and functional now.  We’re also upgraded to the most recent version of WordPress, so you may see some slight changes to the “back end” when you go to write a new post.

Now I’m going to work on migrating my professional blog, and hope that it doesn’t go dark for a whole week, since it’s an important element in the portfolio for my pre-tenure review, which is being considered by the Rank and Tenure committee right now. Eeeep!

Also, I will be working on a way to have the posts automatically indicate who wrote them.  Real soon now. I promise. 🙂