Halloween Patchwork Blazer

I have once again made a Halloween patchwork project.

I made the first one in 2020, inspired by a friend's similar project.  Then made another one the next year because my small yardage storage was getting crowded.  Last year I started to wonder if this was becoming a tradition.

And here we are this year, the evening before Halloween.

 

 I don't think it's a tradition yet--if it were, I might have thought of making it before October 25 and starting it on the 27th.

I settled on a pattern on the 25th, picked out (most of) the fabric on the 26th, and started cutting 4½" squares--the size of my little quilt block ruler--on the 27th.

I cut 145 squares and started by assembling the lapels

and then realizing I needed more squares.

I cut a few more solid black squares from the various black cotton and cotton heavy solid scraps I had, then decided to go ahead and use a print that I had rejected earlier as not quite being the right colors.  But.  I had a lot of it (relatively--enough to cut 22 squares), and that became more important than being Just Right.

 I ended up cutting 173 squares, as well as keeping all of the odds and ends that weren't big enough to cut the full size square, so I could use those in corners that didn't need the full square.  I had six squares left over, while the jacket used 184 pieces (if I counted right.) 

Since I made the lapels first, I was aggressive about starting out using partial squares, so that's why there's a small strip of prints along the edge.

I used Butterick 4610 for this, which I got from the craft thrift store

The tissue had been cut by an earlier owner.  Some of the pieces had been ironed to interfacing.  Some had been lengthened (with taped-on pieces of starched muslin). Some had been cut at size 14.  Some had been cut at size 20. The lining pieces had obviously not been used at all.  There were little bits of red wool stuck to everything.

I removed the length and cut more of the pieces down to size 14.  I did cut the side front pieces at size 16 width, and omitted the front darts that are supposed to parallel the princess seams, to leave room for my abdomen.

Overall, this pattern went together really well.

Except.

If you've read many of my posts, you know I judge a pattern by how well the sleeve caps fit the armscye.

In that regard, this pattern has been judged very harshly.  I worked a lot to get the ease as innocuous as possible, but just was not happy with the result.  I decided that would be a good place to stop for the evening, and maybe I'd feel better about it in the morning.

Not only did I not feel better about it in the morning, but I also realized that I had keyed off of the wrong thing when I laid out the patches for the sleeves, so the sleeve patches did not line up with the body patches.

I glared angrily at this situation while I did my morning exercises, until I eventually had the idea that I could solve both the problem of the mis-aligned patches and the annoying excess of ease by adding some fabric to the top of the under sleeve.

The most inconspicuous way to have done that would have involved removing the squares under the arm and sewing more back in, but I was not in the mood for that, so I cut some flattened half circles and stitched those in.

I started pinning the sleeve back into the armscye, with barely any ease at the top, and noted where there was excess fabric in that flattened half circle.  I unpicked the ends of the stitching attaching it to the sleeve and finagled things around until the sleeve cap could be pinned smoothly to the insert, and the insert attached smoothly to the sleeve.  I stitched the insert back down and trimmed off the excess, which I used to trim the excess off of the other side after I partly unpicked the stitches there. This pictures shows the gray bits I trimmed from the first sleeve, waiting for me to pick out the stitches on the purple spider print and trim those parts away.

Did that make sense? Was there a better way to do this? Doesn't matter!

Here's how it looked when everything was stitched.

The sleeve is still a bit of a mess up there, but I got rid of that unnecessary ease *shakes fist* and everything else lines up now, so it's good. (There are also some thin shoulder pads in there, from my stash of salvaged shoulder pads instead of being custom made.)

Since I added that bit of length under the arm, I removed some at the cuff before sewing things together.

I did not measure any part of this sleeve correction process, instead aligning things with other things and then with the appropriate pattern pieces.  I felt like the less thought involved, the better.

Looking at how the sleeve turned back to meet the lining, I'd say stuff ended up the right length.

 

The "glowworm" green lining I thrifted on a roll in 2011 was perfect for this, and it turned out that there was just enough of it left to cut what was needed.  I'd say "end of an era," but I do still have lots of scraps of it.

And here you can see one of the unavoidable bits of hand sewing, closing up the lower end of where the lining meets the facing.  Ignore the places the iron was too hot for the lining fabric. I did use some un-pieced fabric on the inner edge of the facing, as well as the under collar

I thought to press the patchwork seam allowances in opposite directions on the horizontal strips, so they didn't need to be pinned when sewn together (this was more successful in some areas than others.)  I pressed all of the horizontal patchwork seams up, so I did pin those where they were sewn together at the garment seams, although I was not worried about where, exactly, 5/8" was when there were angles involved.

I thought it would be fun to have an over-the-top button, although, compared to everything else, it's relatively understated.

I think I used 20 different fabrics? (and that's with considering all of the different blacks fabrics the same.)  This definitely reached farther into my Halloween-and-coordinated fabric stash than the previous years' projects--including fabrics used in some of the earlier projects--with a color scheme that honestly surprised me. It's kinda swampy.

Which is fine, and completely seasonally appropriate.