A Jacket Revisited

 Years ago, I thrifted Simplicity 6601 from 1974

I thought the long sleeve jacket had a lot of potential, and in late 2013 I used some thrifted polyester fleece to make this

I learned two things from this project:

    • The jacket is not only cute, but extremely easy to make
    • I Do Not Like™ polyester fleece

I don't remember the ultimate fate of the jacket, but I do still have the buttons.

So when a recent visit to the Walmart mill end precut bins found some 60" woven boiled wool (?!--I mean, it obviously has something synthetic blended into it, but...still.) in a '2 yard for $4' bundle (??!!), I couldn't resist buying it, and very quickly realized it would work to make a proper version of that polyester fleece jacket

With the same buttons!

 

My top stitching skills have improved in the last 8 years, but they're still not perfect, especially around curves.

I don't have a problem with that imperfection, I'm just acknowledging it.  (Besides, we all know that if it did bother me, I'd've picked it out and re-sewn it.)

I decided to add a lining, so the jacket would seem more finished.  I didn't simply echo the shell for the lining pieces, because the shell has 10 darts (2x bust, front waist, back waist, back neckline, and elbow), and, while those darts were easy enough to deal with in the thick wool, I did not want to deal with them in the lining fabric.  I quickly rotated the front darts into a princess seam to go with the inner edge of the lapel facing, and the pattern gave a back neck facing that more or less eliminated the darts there, and I wiggled things around until the back waist darts could be compensated for by a center back lining pleat

The lining elbow darts were replaced with ease with no problems.

I ended up making the sleeve lining too short, so the sleeve hem is really deep, even after I re-sewed them with smaller seam allowances

but

they still fall on my wrists where they appear to fall in the (excessively looooonnnnng bodied) illustration

I also borrowed the sleeve cap from KwikSew 3764 (just because that pattern was out and easy to grab) so I wouldn't have to gather the lining sleeve caps.

I ran out of bobbin thread when top stitching the waistband, but the benefit of boiled wool (even when it has synthetic components) is that it absorbs stitches, so the extra back tacking isn't nearly as obvious as the stitching for the other side of the waistband that should have been covered by the front edge of the waistband.  Which, again, if I were going to be concerned about that, I would have done something about it.  I guess I still could do something, but who's going to be scrutinizing my waistband?

The lining ended up a tiny bit short (in retrospect, I probably could have compensated by not aligning the lining perfectly with the shell edge when adding the waistband), but, again.  Not terribly bad.

Maybe someday I'll make this in something besides a spongy black fabric...