05 November 2008

Sha-wing!

Some comeback eh? I write all about how I wanna come back & so on & then....nothing.
Like Gord says though, it's like riding a blogcycle.
I half-assedly promise to post more regularly. Kinda.


I was in dire need of a Spring/Fall jacket - I was falling into the slippery slope of the Canadian Tuxedo far, far too often. Trolling etsy one day, I spotted some totally amazing fabric & picked up a pattern & got to work.

It's McCalls M5711 , with totally amazing plastic bags stuck in tree branches fabric from Passenger Pigeon. I started this at the begining of October, thinking it would take me 2 days, max. It ended up taking much longer, and I kept running into really weird pattern issues. The armholes on this thing are like none I've ever sewn (or seen) - and I didn't notice the drop shoulders until after I had put them in. If I had, I would have changed them up.


The lining didn't work out so smoothly & I had to put the collar in 3 times to get it right - and it's still kind of bunchy in places.


When I told some friends that I got this fabric, one of them pointed out that it was pretty risky of Passenger Pigeon to sell their fabrics. What if someone made something totally crappy out of their recognizable fabric & people thought it was from their line? She was right - and this made me very aware of taking my time & doing a good job on the jacket. Despite trying to be extra attentive, there were parts that just didn't work out well at all. The pattern was a lot more complicated than it needed to be. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I consider myself a fairly seasoned seamstress & I had to fumble my way through a lot of this. It looks good, but I know it's not perfect & I'm finally at a stage in my life where that bugs the hell out of me. I do like it a lot though, despite the messy bits & I can tell I'll wear it tons.
Next up is my winter coat, which is a mostly self drafted pattern so I'll have no one but myself to blame.