Story of the Couture Velvet Jacket - a work in progress

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.

Sewing the silk charmeuse to silk charmeuse was just fine as well.

The hard part has been on the few pieces where I had to sew silk charmeuse to the silk velvet… talk about one slippery bugger! The straight part of the seams was fine as long as I went slow and carefully. The big issues came on the curved areas. Sewing the side front silk charmeuse to the silk velvet front facing. One went in okay with me only having to redo it once. The other side I ended up having to hand baste with silk thread in cross hatches to keep everything lined up and even with that plus pins there was a smidge of slippage. Not enough to re-do but seriously! 

Interior pocket pinned on and ready for hand sewing to the right front facing.

The belt loops and the interior pocket were added prior to the lining. The interior pocket was another slippery bugger and I ended up hand sewing the entire thing together and then onto the interior facing piece. I added a fun piece of ribbon to the top of the pocket both for fun and to stabilize the top of the pocket. In order to get the ribbon sewn on nicely I actually used a glue stick on it to hold it to the velvet and then edge stitched it using the Digital Feed Foot on my machine.  This pocket is far from perfect… but, then again, so am I! this quirky fun pocket will stay in to represent the un-perfectness of life.

The needle board from Bias Bespoke in NYC.

When pressing on the needle board you have to be careful to only use the tip of the iron and be careful not to press off the side of the board or you will get marks. The indentations from the needle board brush out quite easily.
 

For all the pressing of the velvet I used a needle board that I purchased from Bias Bespoke in NYC.  I hemmed and hawed about buying the needle board. I did an exhaustive search for needle boards and in the end I decided on this one. It is pretty much the size of a sleeve board and long enough to easily press the seams. It is also flexible enough to ‘drape’ over my tailor’s ham to press the curved bust area. I am really happy with this specialty piece of equipment!

The sleeves were installed and then the collar was basted on and the whole thing is starting to look like a finished project!  Taking photos of this velvet is quite a challenge due to the nap and the color.


Jacket awaiting finishing. Below the brightness has been adjusted to better see some of the details.

Jacket in progress with no belt

Close up of the asymmetrical collar. The drape of the silk velvet with the cotton flannel underlining is just delicious!

I still have quite a bit to do on the project. Sew on the facings and lining and cut bias flannel strips to pad out the hem and then of course all the grading and under stitching, hemming and buttonholes and maybe a couple of small snaps. Most of what is left is all hand work and hopefully I can get it done in another week or two!

Happy Sewing!!

My sister and I

The Details of the Winter Coat

For those that like the details! Last post I showed the final product of my Nanette Lepore knockoff winter coat and discussed a little bit about my process and gave a high level overview. In this post I am sharing the photos I took during construction and giving a little bit more detail.

Loving my new coat!!

***Warning***  A heck of a lot of photos! 26 to be exact!!
If you only want to see the final product and the highlights of the project go to this post: 

Nannette Lepore inspired knock off! A Winter Coat

Step 1: Create a pattern. For this I used my mater darted bodice pattern. Rotated darts into horizontal lines, used the Pamela Vanderlinde Patternmaking for Jacket and Coat Design book to guide me on how and where to expand for wearing ease.

First draft of pattern- I made 4 versions before getting to final coat version.

 Step 2: Lots of muslins. I ended up making 5 muslins. I was okay with doing this because I was in full control of the design. Each step of the way I made changes and depending on how big the changes were sometimes I re-muslined after just 1 big change as in the photo below. This was muslin 2 with some big changes to move to muslin 3. I make sure that I write notes on my muslin in a sharpie so that I can clearly delineate any changes I want. IN this case some changes were for fit of the winter coat but many of them were for design elements. I make a muslin, put it on myself, make any notes, put it on my dress form and then make those changes on the muslin, transfer them to the pattern, do the pattern work and then make another muslin!

Muslin between version 2 and 3. I always get the body portion of the design nailed down and then move to the sleeves last.

Final muslin with sleeve added. 

Showing the sleeve with the zipper slit 

 Once the muslin was perfected. (and BTW I did try the muslin on with a very thick sweater. This way I could make sure that I had the room I wanted for winter in Chicago dress.

Moving on to construction: In the last post I mentioned that I ended up cutting out 80+ pieces of fabric! the Front and back main bodies each have 18 separate pieces of fabric. Each main wool fabric piece was underlines in cotton flannel. Each piece of cotton flannel was hand basted to the accompanying wool piece.

Hand basted cotton flannel attached to the wool fabric.

 After the hand basting, the piece is then treated as a single piece of fabric and the construction of the garment begins. The shoulder darts are cut and pressed open, the flannel is trimmed closer to the seam allowances to reduce bulk. in the areas where there were multiple seams meeting I made sure to leave the seam allowances free. this allowed me to trim and press in any manner that I wanted to reduce bulk.

Construction of back pieces. Underlining trimmed and measures taken to reduce bulk. The horizontal seams are top stitched for design.

After main construction, I then catch stitched down the vertical seams to the underlining only.

Close up of catch stitching of the vertical seams to the underlining.

Photos of the inside and outside of the back.

 With the back completed, I started on the front. Other than the front opening, the other change that I made was to add in-seam pockets. Due to the shaping in that lower horizontal seam I had to cut separate pocket pieces verses cutting the pockets in one piece with the lower and middle piece of main fabric. I cut a facing piece for the front and back of each pocket out of the wool and then the pocket bags were cut out of the lining fabric.I really, really wanted to make sure that the pocket opening was stabilized. I want no chance of the pocket pieces stretching out over time.To do this I used the selvage edge of silk organza plus on both side plus I also used a very narrow piece of twill tape. the pockets look great and so far there has been no gaping!! If I make these again, the only change would be to make them maybe a 1/2 inch wider.

Detail of the external pocket construction

 Once the front and backs were together, I tried it on and pinned it shut along center front to make sure that there were no changes needed before I moved on in construction.

In-progress photo in the mirror.

 At this point I completed the lining. I almost always sew the lining first or midway through. Why? because once I get towards the end of a garment, it annoys the hell out of me if I have to stop and then construct the lining, it sort of puts a stop to my good feeling of being almost done! I know, weird. It works for me and I bet everyone has there own little quirks in their sewing methods!

Look at that plaid matching!!

The biggest challenge in sewing the lining was matching the plaid! I wanted it to look like that the back and front pieces were cut out of one solid piece of fabric and not cut out of 6 separate pieces!
On the facing I was able to eliminate the back shoulder dart by taking a closed wedge across the pattern piece. This helped to reduce bulk! I used an fusible mid weight hair canvas for the facing pieces and this was a perfect amount for stabilization! I also used a modified method of adding a pocket in between the facing and the lining from the book Cool Couture by Kenneth D King. In his method he adds piping. I wanted a very sleek invisible look.

Details of lining, facings and inside pocket.

 Next up was the sleeves... each sleeve has 6 pattern pieces. After I hand basted the flannel underlining to each piece I very carefully labeled and pinned the piece name and description to every piece so I wouldn't screw them up!! I also always make sure to pin my labels to the top of the pieces so I know orientation as well.

Detail of sleeve pieces and flat construction to do the top stitching.

Once the flat pieces were constructed and top stitched I sewed the underarm sleeve and left the opening for the zipper. The sleeve was then carefully steamed and pressed.

Details of the sleeve inside and out prior to sleeve head and zipper insertion.

I used a sleeve head made of tie interfacing cut on the bias to smoothly gather the sleeve head and to provide some support and keep it from collapsing. This eliminates having to baste and gather the thick fabric and you can see how nicely shaped they are after sewing these in and a steam shaping/pressing. 

Details of sleeve head and the shaping the help provide.

 For the zipper I used the selvage edge of silk organza to add some extra stabilization, hand basted the zipper and then sewed it in on the machine using a center zipper application.

Details of the lower sleeve and zipper insertion.

 Next up... bound buttonholes. I always test out my buttonholes on a scrap sandwich of the fabric, lining, facing, interfacing. Whatever the final sandwich of fabric will be, I make sure to test on those exact same fabrics. I do this no matter what type of buttonhole it is and no matter how comfortable I am with the process.

Details of my test welt buttonhole and details of making the actual welts.

 On the coat front I used silk basting thread to trace the CF and the boundaries of the buttonholes. This makes sure that placement is exactly where I want it!.

Details of the tread basting and of the welts sewn on to the front of the coat

 On the inside I used a piece of silk organza to add some extra stabilization to the buttonholes.

Details showing the silk organza , the welts sewn on and the clipping of the fabric to make the opening from the back side.

Once the opening is made the welts are pushed through to the inside and then basted shut with diagonal stitches. Once the welts are securely sewn the basting stitches are removed and you have a beautiful bound buttonhole!

Details of the bound buttonhole process.

 With the buttonholes created, I then set in the sleeves. This needed to be done very carefully so that the horizontal seams on the bodice front and back lined up perfectly with the horizontal seams on the sleeves. To achieve this I pinned and hand basted first and then went to the machine.

Details of the sleeves set-in with the horizontal seams matching almost perfectly!

Next step was sewing in the lining. I used a partial machine/partial hand method. The center front around the neck and back down was done on the machine. The body and sleeve hems were done by hand and the inside buttonholes were hand stitched. 

Details of the inside of the facing side of the buttonholes and the hand stitching of the lining.

 Somehow I totally forgot to take pictures of the collar in progress! The inner collar was underlined in the cotton flannel and the outer collar was interfaced with a fusible to hold its shape. Somehow, where the collar meets at CF the under collar is a little lower. At first I was irritated about this and was going to take it off and re-do it but then after trying it on and pinning it closed as is and pinning it closed as if it was perfectly even, I decided that having the inside collar a little lower was better! It did not tend to rub against my lower chin. SO I actually modified the pattern piece to make this a detail rather than a mistake!!

Details of the collar and the coat front prior to the buttons and collar snap being sewn on.

I have now had this coat in my winter coat rotation for a little over 2 months now and I love it!!
If I were to make it again there are only 2 things that I would change about it. (other than design features or style lines!)

1. I would make the inseam pockets slightly wider.
2. I would experiment a little more on the hem finish. This was basically lined to the edge but I feel like this was a little wimpy for this coat.

Other than that I am over the moon and staying nice and warm :)

Once again a picture of my niece and I in Utrecht, Netherlands.

 Happy Sewing!!

On a walk with the Princess yesterday and we had to jump in every puddle!! Reminds me to take joy in the simple things of life!

Nannette Lepore inspired knock off! A Winter Coat

A couple years ago I ripped out a full page add of a Nanette Lepore advertisement. I came across it again as I was going through my tons of  'stuff'' during my move last May. It struck my fancy enough to put into my very small and well curated keep pile.

I decided over the summer that I really wanted to make this coat! I dig some digging and found that this is called the Oceanic Cape. Digging around a bit more and I found that you can acquire this cape through RenttheRunway .com This was a great way for me to see additional photos and views of the garment other than just from the ripped out magazine page!

The original advertisement that I ripped out of a magazine,
probably from Vogue and from several years ago.

I quickly decided to make several changes to the design which is why I cam calling this an 'Inspired Knockoff'!

Changes made to suit my design of making this a Chicago Winter worthy coat included:

1. change the overall length to mid thigh
2. Add zippers to the arms so I can close them against the weather
3. change up the pockets
4. slightly change up the overall silhouette to fit as a winter coat
5. keep the same original proportions of the coat in regards to the sections and the horizontal seams.

The second challenge was to find the fabric. I loved the color but was not dead set on finding this color. We all know how challenging that can be! Back in August I walked into Michael's Fabrics/A Fabric Place in Baltimore and i'll be damned that I found the most perfect fabric to make this dreamed up coat of mine! That was it I had to buy that fabric! Of course it was the most beautiful Valentino napped cashmere wool. You know the kind that comes with the really high price tag PLUS the fancy label... that I never sew into my garments, I just put them on one of my magnet boards!

Needless to say, I had to take a very big breath to purchase the fabric and only after I made multiple muslins and was super happy with the fit, shape, proportions, did I even think about cutting into the fabric. It was nerve wracking! Once I made the first cut I powered through it and had only happy hands and happy brain. I tell you, making the multiple muslins really helped to booster my courage in cutting into the fabric.

The entire coat was underlined with a cotton flannel and lined with a plaid silk duiponi (but very fine, like a cross with a silk taffeta) and these gorgeous gold buttons! Both lining and buttons were also sourced from Michael's fabrics. The Buttons were perfect and of course the perfect button was $12 a piece!! Of well, at that point I didn't even bat an eye.

For the collar I decided to use a large gold sew on snap. I felt like the button would be too heavy both in weight and in look and using the large gold snap allows for a cleaner look at my neckline when closed and when open it blends into the button look.

I had the muslin completed in early November for the Sarah Veblen workshop. She tweaked the back a little bit and then I got started on construction. I was determined to get this coat done before I left for Europe on December 12th! I felt like a machine!! Why the hell I thought it was a good idea to make a coat with 6 front pieces, 6 back pieces, 6 sleeve pieces for EACH sleeve, 2 collar pieces and separate pocket pieces and times all those by 3 for the lining, underlining and fashion fabric, never mind the interfacing pieces! Sooo.. for those that are mathematically inclined.... it was a total of 80 pieces of fabric that I had to cut out and keep track of and hand baste and line up all those damn seams... and just think of your eyes popping out of your head  AND doing this all during the holidays between Thanksgiving and December 11!!

I took hundreds of pictures during every phase from first draft of pattern, through multiple muslins, all the cutting and construction process, all the way to the finished garment you see here! Next blog post will be a photo tour of the process and construction.

I found these winter rain boots quite by accident in the perfect color to match my coat!
How fortuitous!!

It was SOOOOOOO worth it!! The coat fits like a dream and is so unbelievably comfortable and so many lovely compliments while on my trip to Europe.

Above- at Christmas market in Lieden, Netherlands
Below- walking with my niece, Roxie, in Utrecht, Netherlands

Happy Sewing!!