Sewing in Denial: Wool Jacket in Summer

 This is, I suppose, a muslin, because I have an odder fabric that I want to use the same pattern for, but this fabric itself isn't exactly throwaway

 There's definitely wool in it--I can tell by how the insides of my wrists itch when I'm working with it.  The iron came nowhere near this project, so I haven't had the chance to accidentally learn if it's blended with any synthetics (like I did with the woolen moto jacket I made in February.)

The pattern I used is a revisit of New Look 6120

buuuut, since there's a big difference between a thick spongy woolly tweed and the fabrics the pattern actually calls for, I...did some improvising.  I'll ramble about that under the cut.

Here's the jacket

 

The first improvisational decision I made was to make the sleeves a bit narrower, since I remember the previous versions I've made have had excessively wide sleeves.  Mmmm...yeah.  I probably could have skipped that, and need to remember that wider sleeves probably work better for thicker fabrics.  This will be fine as long as I don't wear anything under it with thick sleeves.  Probably.

I will say that narrowing the sleeves made attaching the cuffs a lot easier, since they didn't require quite as extreme a stretch to fit

Does the lining look familiar?

 It's what was left over from that woolen moto jacket in February. 

I actually did the right thing and slip stitched the opening, through which everything was turned right-side-out, instead of machine stitching the opening closed with the highly-contrasting black thread in the machine for the rest of the project.  The slip-sitched seam is visible in the photo above.

Yes, there's black thread top stitching clearly visible next to the facings, but that didn't bother me so much because it's so close to the tweed

And, oh, those facings--another improvised element, and the one where I made the biggest mistake: when I cut the lining fabric, I forgot that I needed to add two seam allowance's worth of width beyond the edge of the pieces I cut for the facings.  So.  Things got a little dubious when I finally discovered the problem...when I was sewing in the bottom band.  But!  The loose sponginess of the tweed meant I could squish it down to the right width without gathering anything (because "cut it out again" was not an option at that point, for reasons ranging from "no more of the lining fabric left" to "almost done don't wanna.")  So.  Anyway.  If you scroll up, you can see how the fabric does blouse out a bit over the ribbing part of the lower band.

That's also where the pockets are, so those extra layers of tweed and lining probably added to the blousy bulk

 See: pocket.

And now I will try to describe the chaos involved in that lower band.

so...see...the actual pattern instructions, meant for layers of lighter-weight fabrics, call for inserting the zipper as the very last step, by placing the zipper face-down along that raw edges--shell, lining, and lower band (which is meant to go all the way to the zipper, unlike what I did here), stitching the zipper, then flipping the zipper out and stitching again.  Yeah...not with my decisions to, one, make this from a thick spongy woolly tweed, which, two, felt like it should have facings instead of just a bunch of layers stitched raw-edge to the zipper and flipped over, and, three, if I was going to insert the zipper between the facing and the shell, then I wanted to--actually, maybe even needed to--have a tweed bit next to the zipper, too.

So...I cut the tweed bits the width of the pattern-given piece for the waist band, and a length that would make it line up with the top stitching at the edge of the pockets--here, lemme show you how it ended up

 getting there, though...well...   First, I sewed the tweed bits to the ends of the band, which I did not shorten, because, like the cuffs as related to the pattern-given sleeve width, I knew the given length needs a lot of stretching, and I didn't think that would be a good thing for this fabric.

I constructed the lining and shell, then sewed the tweed extension bits to the corresponding shell and lining edges, leaving the ribbing flopping free. Then followed the awkward flipping of things to insert the zipper

 while the ribbing looked like this

 Once I had everything else sewn together, I flipped the shell and lining around and sewed in the rest of the band the way the pattern wanted the whole thing sewn.  

Turning it right-side-out brought the usual "wow the hole I left in the lining side seam could've been bigger, huh" thoughts, but it wasn't the worst I've done to myself.

The collar band also involved some deviation from the instructions, but only because I initially thought that I wouldn't at all be able to insert the band as per the instructions.  I top stitched all along the zipper with the thought that I'd be able to apply the band much like on a button-up shirt.  Mmm.  No.  At least, "no" with a stretchy knit.  Soooo, I picked out the top few inches of top stitching--great fun! with the thick spongy tweed! that the thread matched really well! with presbyopia!  But, it was only a few inches on each side, and that top stitching removal did allow me to insert the neck band as the pattern directions wanted (and long before sewing things like side seams or waist bands, so it was easy to turn everything inside-out as needed.)

The thickness and sponginess (yes I keep saying that) of the tweed meant that the back stitching to restart and stop the top stitching is well concealed.

I do have a red separating zipper that would have looked nice in this, but, again: muslin-ish, so the hand-full of ivory separating zippers I got from Wawak a few years ago (because I mis-read the zipper weight and thought I was ordering zippers that would work for doll clothes. oops.) would be appropriate for this.

(I will very probably trim that slub that's sticking up above the top of the zipper there.)

And, hey, a picture of the back, which means this post is done.