Herding Cats

 The first try of McCall's 8121, complicated by a perhaps excessive amount of purpose-made cat appliqués, is finished

Yayyyy

When I resumed work on assembling the jacket, I basically tossed out the actual instructions and followed (what I remembered of) the instructions for Burda 6800.

The big difference is that McCall's 8121 has you machine stitching the lining to the sleeve zipper, then hand sewing the sleeve lining to the lining armscye, and you know I'm not going to do that.  So I machine sewed the sleeve lining to the lining armscye, and hand-stitched the lining to the zipper, as the Burda pattern commands.

I know that I can make the hand stitching here less visible, but this works fine for me.

I did do something more like a proper slip stitch to close up the lower edges where the lining meets the lapel facings.

...but of course I didn't press them after.

The instructions for this pattern also expected me to hand stitch the bottom edge of the lining to the bottom edge of the shell...actually, the Burda instructions do, too, but, again, you know I'm not going to do that.  Working with the jacket and lining turned right-sides-out, I flipped the lower edges of both around to be right-sides together for about ¾ of the way around--all the farther it could easily go before the rest of the jacket was too much in the way--and machine stitched that.  That just-sewn section was turned right side out, then the unsewn edges were pulled through the unstitched area of the lining/facing seam mentioned above (well before hand sewing that closed) on the just-sewn side, maneuvered into being right-sides-together, and machine sewn.  I did have to stop and start on both ends to keep the seam allowances of the facings and linings free, so they could be hand stitched later.

I did take extra care to get the bottom edges at least somewhat even around the bottom of the zipper, including aggressively rolling one side when I hand stitched the facing lowermost edge to the pressed-up inner lower edge.

There are irregularities one either side where I hand stitched the lining to the facings, but no-one's ever going to be scrutinizing the symmetry, so it's fine.

I shortened the lapel zipper from the top by using sprue cutters to cut off the zipper teeth to the needed length, and, when everything else was done, I crimped on a new upper zipper stop.

A big concern I have when top stitching lapels is figuring out which side is more important to stitch from--I chose to stitch this with the visible lapel up, which meant that the lower body was stitched with the outside down.  It worked out this time.

The black cat's placement was chosen to obscure the fact that I forgot to make sure that that lower not-a-band seam was properly aligned on either side of the zipped zipper, and, once I realized that it was not at all aligned, it was time for an obfuscatory appliqué.

Still not super happy about how the welt pocket flaps ended up.  I do think inserting zippers instead would be a viable option.

We'll hope the cats distract from that lack of structure at the cuffs.

Part of the challenge of making the appliqués for this was that I wanted to keep the color scheme limited to mostly neutrals, but of course I added pinks and purples, because I do want to wear it, so it needs dome of My Colors™ on it.

I mentioned in the earlier post that the sleeve zippers aren't the best.  But.  Look! Kitty!

The under collar is made from lining, as per the pattern instructions, and the whole collar does roll over nicely.

One of the criteria by which I judge a pattern's quality is how easily the sleeve caps ease into the armscye, and I'm happy to report that they went together easily here, both in the spongy wool shell and the unyielding polyester lining.  They went together well enough that I didn't feel the need to press them once sewn.

Burda 6800's instructions include a preliminary step of fusing strips of interfacing to the wrong side of the body and sleeve lower edges, and I think that bit of reinforcement would have served this jacket well, too.  Maybe I'll remember in the future, along with the other things I did change, like flipping the zipper angle, and things I want to change, like inserting zippers into the welt pockets instead of adding the flaps, and extending the body pieces all to the same length...and sewing on a proper band, instead of whatever you'd call what's going on at the bottom here.

And I do wonder how much of the issues with the edges on this are due to the excessive handling done while attaching the appliqués, so could have been countered by stay stitching all the edges first.  (Or, y'know, not machine sewing all the appliqués before the jacket was fully assembled.)

I honestly didn't expect to like this pattern.  Reviews expressed disappointment in how boxy it is, so I expected Kwik Sew 3764-levels of boxiness.  It turns out that this one in size 14 is honestly less boxy than even Burda 6800 in size 14.

I probably will make it again, just not...y'know...like this.