Colette Anise: My First Jacket!

Yeah!! I made a jacket!! I’m a real sewist now! Lol

First off, thank goodness for my stash, even as meager as it is! after losing my job, my fabric budget is pretty much nil, so I was only able to make the Anise with stuff I already had 🙂

The outer fabric came from the haul of remnants I scored from the OSF sale I blogged about (here). I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough so I cut the collar last in case I had to omit it. I was so happy it turned out I did, I BARELY had enough & was able to just squeak out every piece. Good thing too; it’s getting colder here & I wanted both the collar and the longer sleeves.

The underlining is cotton batiste, also from OSF.

The lining is rayon bemberg, from my stash.

This project required lot of cutting! My fabric was so hard to cut I needed two hands, even using my best scissors, so I switched to my rotary and it went smoothly from there.

Hand basting the underlining was a slow process as well, so I did it in two stages.

I’ve never sewed this many layers of thick fabric at once; sewing was interesting but my old sewing machine is a super trooper & handled it with ease. The really thick parts, I hand cranked lol. The only tricky bit was the button holes; I’ll probably hand sew them next time, as I had to do them freehand due to the thickness of the fabric making my buttonhole foot useless.

I know this is a swing jacket but I knew if I didn’t do an FBA and add a bust dart, this style would be super unflattering on me. So I did the muslin & was pleased to see that even with the addition of darts, on me, the jacket was the shape it was supposed to be without them.

I made an 8 with a 2″ FBA. The only other adjustment I made was to lengthen the sleeves. The fit of the final jacket is looser in areas than I expected but I’ve also been losing weight so that could be partly why.

Thanks to Sarai’s informative posts for the sewalong (which I followed after the actual sewalong was over lol), I learned about turn of cloth in making the collar. I also did my first welt pockets, and my first full lining!!

<img src="https://symondezyn.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/20121203-131324.jpg" alt="20121203-131324.jpg"

As jackets/coats are pretty much my favourite garment type, I am excited to have finished my first one, and I will DEFINITELY be making many more

Please excuse my wrinkled disheveled look – I promise you, my collar lies flat and it’s smooth and even; this is just me, tired after a crazy morning of shopping! lol