This week I have a work in progress post. Some of the more couture methods that I use for garment making mean that it can take a couple weeks or longer to make a garment. The ultimate in slow and intentional sewing! This garment is quite different from any I have done before because it is un-selfish sewing. To be completely honest I was worried that I would get knee deep into this project and start to feel resentful because it wasn't for me. I was silly to worry about that! It is for my sister and every step of this project has been done in love so it is a total feel good at this point!
 |
| WIP jacket. No lining, .facings or hems yet. |
So here is the story of how the Velvet jacket came to be.
My sister is an artist and went to work at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1999 as the Department Chair. She stepped back from this position to concentrate on teaching and to do more art around 2006. Since then she has been head of the 3-D art department and she specializes in sculpture. All kinds of amazing sculpture! From Iron to wood and every sort of substrate in-between. Early in 2019 my sister let all of the family know that she
had been accepted for a solo exhibition at an art museum. This is a single person
exhibit and it is a big deal. She has been in MANY joint exhibits before and
smaller things but this one is her biggest solo exhibit to date.
I am so proud of her and I wanted to do something special
for the opening and gallery talk that she is giving at the show. So, I told her
that I wanted to give her the gift of clothing. And asked what she envisioned
herself wearing. Her answer was a blue velvet jacket.
I immediately went about collecting swatches of all kinds of
blue silk and silk/rayon velvets from many resources. Making sure to get 2 sets
of each so that I could mail her a set and I could keep a set. Made it easier
to discuss. Once a velvet was chosen, a 100% silk navy velvet from Promenade
fabrics in New Orleans I went about searching for a lining. This was much
easier!! I found this fantastic silk charmeuse print on Emma One Sock. I sent
the link to my sister and she loved it, which I knew she would, and I ordered
it!
 |
| Partial selection of velvet swatches that we worked with. |
When discussing style of jacket, she mentioned that she had
a black ponte-ish jacket in her closet that she really likes wearing. It makes
her feel good and confident and looks good and that she would like that sort of
style. So she sent it to me in the mail. I then talked with her about it and
took notes on what she liked and didn’t like about it and so on.
It was a basic armscye princess jacket with a slight boxy shape that has a self fabric belt, and asymmetric closing with the buttons running down left side and a large asymmetric roll collar. I did a rub
off of the jacket to get a good starting point. It would not be perfect by any
means. The original jacket is a totally different textile and was never custom fit to her body.
Luckily for me it is a armscye princess seamed jacket so plenty of areas to
adjust for fit!
·
Rub off of all the pieces of the jacket.
·
Create a pattern
·
Walk and adjust all the seam lines
·
Add notches and other placement marks
·
Make a muslin of the body only (no sleeves and
no collar)
·
Wait until Christmas holidays when she was
coming to visit for fitting J
·
Try on and make adjustments to pattern body
·
Make changes to muslin and pattern
·
Draft, make muslin and drape the sleeve.
·
Mark and make all changes to sleeve and armscye
on muslin
·
Make changes to pattern
·
Baste on collar
·
Make any changes as necessary for collar
·
Have her pick out buttons from my collection. I
had several good options and she picked a set of vintage Czech glass button.
During the fitting of the muslin I had her put on the
original jacket to compare and the issues that I saw in the muslin were also in
that jacket. Nice confirmation that it wasn’t me that screwed things up! LOL!! (of course I did not take any full pictures of her in the jacket, we were excited about getting to the muslin!)
After the holidays it came time to start all the hard work!
The cutting out of the velvet, the different underlinings, stabilizers and the
lining pieces. Then all of the testing.
 |
| Cutting out the batiste underlining. When using my rotary cutter I like to weight down the pattern pieces with lengths of chain and large nuts covered in ribbon. |
 |
Fussy cutting of the lining to line up the medallion motif.
|
 |
Looks quite pretty laid out on the floor!
|
 |
| Cutting out and working with silk velvet is MESSY! there are silk fibers covering everything. I was constantly swiffering the floor and wiping down the work table. As I trim and grade seams I have been keeping a damp rag nearby to capture as much of the pile as I can. |
Time wise it took me 2 days to cut everything out. The
velvet needed to be cut single layer to avoid slippage. The Lining needed to be
cut single layer to line up motif’s. plus, all the other pieces of underlining
and interfacing.
 |
| All the pieces cut out and ready for sewing. |
I spent a full day doing testing. I wanted to test
everything. Regular seams in the velvet and make sure of the stitch and do
something long enough to make sure that I worked on slippage issues. The most
time consuming of the testing was getting the thread color matched for the
buttonholes! Thankfully JoAnn’s near me was having a sale on thread. After
trying 6 colors, I found the one that I liked best! During the testing I took copious
amounts of notes in my sewing notebook so that I could refer to them as needed.
These included all the final stitch settings and pressing settings that I
tested.
 |
| Test pieces on the left- made in the same way as the actual pieces with the underlining hand basted on and any interfacing fused to the underlining pieces. On the right is the pile of testing that I did. |
 |
| Part of my testing also included test pressing. Very important to do when using napped fabrics. This is a length of velvet that I tested, half presses on the needle board and half without the needle board you can really see the difference. |
After all the testing the sewing started! Woo Hoo!
 |
| Belt loops and belt pinned to the batiste and ready for hand basting. |
First I spent 2 days’ hand basting the imperial batiste to
the velvet with silk thread and on some pieces, the collar and cuffs, I used
cotton flannel as the underlining. Before the hand basting I made sure to apply
any fusible interfacing that I wanted to use to the underling and not to the
velvet.
Next I headed to the machine- sewing the velvet to the
velvet using lots of fine silk pins and the digital feed foot on my machine. No
problems sewing velvet to velvet!
 |
| Partial construction. No sleeves, collar or belt loops. |
 |
| Sleeves and collar constructed and ready to be attached. |
 |
| The sleeve cuff is technically a band and interlined with the cotton flannel and here you see how it gives it a lux cushy feel. |
