Thursday, February 11, 2010

San Diego Jacket - My first garment in my Wee Little Spring SWAP

The San Diego Jacket from Sewing Workshop.


Happiness:

-the fabric (from Waechter's). It's a perfect weight for spring. I get chilly in air conditioning and this will add just the right weight of warmth.


-the sewing of it. It was a tad difficult in the collar/shoulder but a good challenge for me (it would have been easier with a less open-weave fabric)

UnHappiness:

-it was too large on first blush. I fell between sizes and chose the larger one (size large) based on hip and waist measurement. Since my upper bust measurement was a size medium, but I have a full-bust, I thought choosing the large size would be wise. Not.
-I neglected to add an FBA. It is a loose fitting jacket and I just didn't think I needed one.
-the sleeves are very wide. I took in a dart at the wrist and added a button embellishment (which I like).

New Happiness:

-Hong Kong seams!

This fabric would have just kept unraveling and unraveling until the seams were involved. I double stitched each seam using a small sized stitch as well as zig-zagging each edge. But it was still unraveling. So I took a lovely light-weight silk and made a Hong-Kong finish on most exposed seams.


They aren't quite as even as they should be, but I'm blaming that on the unraveling which was already occurring, which caused me to swerve my straight seems in order to catch good fabric rather than frayed fabric.


Here are a couple of photos of the jacket as it stands today. I hope to alter it to fit a bit better.





2 comments:

Gail said...

I still remember the thrill of my first Hong Kong seam. Great casual jacket - I wouldn't have thought of making it in a light colour.

K-Sue said...

I can see the size problem, but what a great jacket! I think it would be very wearable in a lightweight, casual fleece -and no unraveling. Do you plan to make another in a different fabric?