Marfy #1234 Jacket with Photos

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Finally, photos of the Marfy jacket I finished Thursday evening. I plan to make pants and a skirt from the contrast twill fabric, but for these photos I tried 3 different pairs of pants, none of which is quite right, so if you follow the link and look at all the photos, just ignore the non-coordinating pants.

SEE ALL PHOTOS HERE

I'm generally very pleased with this jacket. I made it a little more fitted than the pattern drawing shows, and I didn't use the pockets, although I made them and tried them in every position imaginable, but they just were not flattering in the slightest. I think the length is pretty good, although I'm thinking of making the next one just a little longer. This is already somewhat longer than what I've been making recently, but I think I'll go longer yet. Here's the pattern drawing. You'll notice that my buttons are on the opposite side, but since these photos are taken in a mirror, the image is backward. In real life, my jacket fastens the same direction as Marfy's illustration.


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I love the fabric, which is from the Fashion Sewing Group. The lining is a silk tie jacquard from Fabric Mart. They had a bunch of them a few months back, and I bought this and one other. This is probably just a bit heavy/stiff for a jacket lining. The other one is a lighter weight, but the wrong color entirely.

I like the jacket open too. It fits really nicely in the back and it stays put when unbuttoned. I would have shown this, but I haven't decided what I'll wear under this. I assume I will most often wear it closed, but it's nice to have a more casual look available.

You can see the inside finish here, including the backs of the handstitched buttonholes.

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The twill fabric is one reason I wanted to do them this way. It's such a touchy fabric. Every little thing leaves its mark and it's hard to get surface stitching to look good or even. It also wants to fray. Not enough to be a problem with ravelling seams or anything, but enough that the buttonhole lips on the test buttonholes wanted to look frowzy. I used FrayBlock on these, and it did help. Meanwhile the tweed was extremely forgiving, and almost completely hid any stitching at all.


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I love these buttons. I found them at JoAnn's, but they're real shell and quite beautiful.

I have to say I'm happy with this jacket, and I am anxious to start on the next one I have planned from the Blass boucle fabric I got from Elliott Berman Textiles.

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I'm going to begin seriously working on my cashmere coat first though.

String Bag & Lots of News

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I decided to knit for the Mu Phi Fundraiser again this year. I skipped last year, and was surprised, but rather pleased too, that my things were missed. I'm making scarves again, which you can see at the bottom, but I also thought it would be fun to try knitting a string carrier bag. This is my second attempt, and I'm kind of pleased with it. It's a slight modification of a pattern I found somewhere on the web. I'm going to do the next one a little differently and I think it will be improved, although I'm happy with this one for myself.

Here it is flat.


And as worn over the shoulder.


One of the problems I have with the idea of making this type of bag as a replacement for throw-away bags is that so many of the patterns I see have you using very expensive yarn. That seems ridiculous, especially if I'm going to try to sell these at a bazaar. Wetspun linen would be ideal for these and they might last a hundred years, but who's going to pay over $20 for one, and that would only cover the cost of the yarn, with no profit for the group. So, I decided to use something cheap and available (I got it at the dime store). This is Aunt Lydia's Size 3 Fashion Crochet Thread in mercerized cotton. It should be quite durable, and has the right look for what I wanted. I'll see how it holds up, but I think it will be just fine. This bag took almost 2 balls, which was less than $4 worth of yarn, about right for something like this, I'd say.

Here are the scarves I'm making.

These are a fun pattern called the Potato Chip Scarf. The pattern is from KnitPicks, although I cast on 180 stitches, as per their original pattern, and it gives you a nice length. These are great for wrapping around the throat, and they stay in position wherever you put them.

I finished the Marfy #1234 jacket last night and I'm very pleased with it. I may wait a day or two to take photos. I've got a rotten cold right now, and I'm not looking too fashionable, to say the least. I will just tease you with a (semi-fuzzy) photo of one of the hand-embroidered buttonholes halfway done. You can see the double strand of thread I used to cord these. After they were done except for the bartack on the inner end, I pulled up the cording threads to shape them, tied the threads off and finished the bartack.

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I worried about them and tested and tested and thought I'd made a big mistake in not doing bound buttonholes to start with, but as it turns out, I love them. I love the look, and I really loved doing them. They're really fairly fast too, which shocked me.

My other big news is that I'm getting a new sewing machine!!! It's a Pfaff 2144 which has been very gently used. In fact, my sister traded it in on the newest Pfaff CV, and she literally almost didn't use it at all, so I'm getting a wonderful, and basically brand new machine. Her dealer is checking and updating it, and shipping it to me, and I'm hoping it will get here by the end of next week. Much anticipation here, and a little anxiety that the learning curve I've heard about with these will be a problem. Naturally, I want it to do everything I want, right now, rather than after I figure it out. Patience is NOT my middle name. It's going to be fun though, and I'm ready for a new machine I think. I haven't worn out my Elna, but it's been going strong for 20 years now, and it's showing its age a bit here and there. I take care with it, but it will be fun to have all the new bells and whistles.

I will be interested to see if the embroidery bug bites. Somehow I doubt it, although I want to try buttonholes using the embroidery capability of the machine. I saw this on a Babylock TOL machine a couple years ago, and it was the first thing that really made me sit up and take notice of an embroidery-capable machine.

Back to the Jacket

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This is my sample for the bands on the sleeves and the pockets for Marfy #1234. I couldn't think what would be the best way to do this and it came to me the other day. The pattern is drafted so that the bands enclose the edge of the fashion fabric. I simply stitched RST on the seamline, flipped it over and folded under the edge. I will handstitch it down on the inside of the real thing. This is just pressed. I think it looks great, although the selvedge edge won't show on the actual jacket. These are the details that I get so excited about when I sew. Watching the fabrics blend and the steam pressing do its magic is just very satisfying. Now if the real thing will only look as good.

I got the notion to order a bunch of sewing books the other day. I was looking for some booklets by Alfred Bach, and found them at Abe Books. As long as I was ordering, I got a bunch of other things. These are used books, and in some cases, the postage for one book is more than the cost of the book, so I looked for other things to order to make it worthwhile. I was lucky enough to find 2 Kenneth King books, including the one that's hard to find, Couture Details. There are several still available, but I have to tell you, I got the one at the best price.

The Bach books are:
Short Cuts to Professional Dressmaking
Short Cuts to Professional Tailoring
Short Cuts to Fitting.

I don't have the fitting book yet, but the other two have impressed me, especially the tailoring book. They were all written before fusibles were available, but there are a lot of things that haven't changed, fusibles or no fusibles. My cashmere coat will not include fusibles either, so this should come in very handy. His list of steps to take when constructing a tailored jacket or coat is really good, in my opinion, as is his explanation of how to "morph" patterns together to get the details you want on the silhouette you want.

If you've never used Abe Books before, they're a nice resource. They're a consortium of used bookstores (maybe some new as well) that have pooled their search functions. They're mostly US, Canadian and UK booksellers. Their prices are generally considerably more reasonable than Amazon, plus it's nice to support small bookstores. NAYY, just a longtime satisfied customer.

Marfy 1234 Jacket Shell

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Here's how far I've gotten on my first version of the Marfy 1234 jacket. The fabric is much more a melange of colors than I think shows on the photo, and the contrast which is just laid on top of the jacket shell is a perfect coordinate. It's a taupe which just makes the colors pop in the jacket fabric. The reverse of the taupe is a dull aqua, and it's okay with the jacket too, but it didn't make it sing like the taupe does. I'm so sorry this doesn't come across in the photo, at least on my computer, but it's great in person. This is something I just bought, and for once I bought a lot, so I have 5 yards of the taupe/aqua to use for coordinates. Definitely pants and probably a skirt, but I feel like I should do something with the reversible qualities of the fabric too, so I may come up with something else too.

I never did post photos of my jacket muslin, although I took enough of them. Every time I did, I found something I could improve. I ended up tucking out about 1" at the waist, and 3/4" above the bust in the front and tapering to nothing at the side back seam. There may have to be a little more taking in at the hem, but I wanted to wait until I saw how it was going to hang in the actual fabric, as that can make a difference. It's not overly big around there now, but the muslin doesn't drape like the boucle, and I don't want it to look skimpy.

I'm now at the point where I need to decide whether to fuse-underline the sleeves. I'm sort of against it, as I don't want them to be stiff, but I wonder about doing a small area at the cap, besides the hem area, which will naturally be fused. I also need to decide on a lining.

I've been pulling threads out of the extra boucle to see if I want to make my own trim, besides the contrast strips on the sleeves and pockets. It could be very pretty trim, but I'm not sure I want to go that far. I think I may like the very tailored look.