An Outfit for 'The' Shoes

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This is the vest/sleeveless jacket I made to wear with the wonderful Fergie shoes. It's the FSG #1960 Cardigan pattern, without the sleeves, and with the shawl collar modification in Nancy Erickson's newsletter. I think it is much more a sleeveless jacket look than a vest, and that's what I'm calling it. The color is probably truest in the first photo.
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It's a nice, beefy knit with surface interest from the black raised threads. Since it was so beefy and almost thick, and because I used no interfacing in it, it has a very soft look and feel.
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You can see that I stitched down the edges of the uppermost seam allowance after grading the allowances that lie beneath. The collar/band unit was sewn on as one, with the allowances all laying the same way, so this made a nice finish which allowed everything to fall as it should.

As noted above, I used the shawl collar pattern piece provided in the Nancy Erickson newsletter, and I think it's fine. I think I might make a less pronounced curve out to the collar from the band if I make another like this. I can't decide if it would make it too bulky where it closes, or if it would be better, but I can always try it and then change back if I don't like it.
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I had thought I'd do patch pockets on this, but I was afraid it would make the front so much heavier than the back that it would hang funny, especially if I actually put anything in the pockets. So, I left them off, and for the look of it, I'm glad I did. I like pockets though, and I wonder if in-seam pockets might work next time. I really don't need the bulk though, so we'll see. I know I could have used weight in the back hem to make it hang straight, but this isn't a structured enough or 'important' enough piece to do that, in my opinion.

The top with this is from a set I made from this same pattern (there's a charcoal cardigan jacket as well) and the skirt is part of it as well, although not from the FSG pattern. I shortened the skirt from calf-length. I think it looks good, and I love a simple 4-seam straight skirt in a knit fabric. It's so much more slimming than without the CF and CB seams. It's an elastic waist, and honestly, you don't need a pattern to make one like it.

It's really, really cold here lately, and we have a bunch of snow on the ground, but at least more isn't coming down right now. I hope the bad storms and big problems are missing all of you, too.

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.

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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.

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.

Jacket Muslin

I don't often do "real" muslins, more often a kind of possibly-wearable muslin, but for this Marfy jacket, I wanted to do it right, especially since I now have a couple of ideas of fabrics I'd like to use with it if I can get it just right.

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I made it to JoAnn's yesterday and bought a bolt of muslin (with my 40% off coupon of course) so there is no excuse now. I also got some very nice $2/yard cotton canvas type fabric for my coat muslin from the home-dec clearance they were having. Marji has convinced me that muslins are the way to go for at least tailored things, if not more.

I'm fairly pleased with my flat pattern alterations, all except one. When I do my FBA it also adds width to the lower part of the front piece. I don't necessarily need that, or not all of it, and so I used the method in Palmer/Pletsch's Fit for Real People to remove it. I thought the method seemed a little cavalier, and I don't remember doing it this way before, but I couldn't recall what I usually do, so thought I'd try it. Well, it was not a success.

They basically have you slice it off the side of the front piece at an angle from the bottom. Unsurprisingly, this causes the front piece to swing to the sides, making it look like it's much too small around. Since I left very wide SAs when I cut out, I'll just add it back in, and then remove the amount piecemeal from the other seams, and maybe some from this seam, but certainly not all of it. What was I thinking? Very little apparently. Perhaps hope springs eternal for the quick, easy fix.

I haven't put the sleeves in yet, but the collar and neckline is just lovely. I'm a little worried about over-fitting this if I start in to put a little more shape in it. It's really supposed to be fairly loose, at least for Marfy, but it should have some shape. Well, after I get the sleeves in, I'll be able to tell a little more.

The thing I'm really excited about now is that I think I have stumbled upon a group of fabrics that would be perfect for the June Capsule Collection at Stitcher's Guild. I had hoped to join in this, and then I became sure I wasn't going to be able to sew for a while yet. Suddenly, I am getting some sewing time in, and it's just great, but with all the fabric I have, I was stymied when I tried to figure out what to do right now, besides work on this muslin. I need some summer pants, and I want easy care over anything else. I just don't need going out and looking stylish clothes right now, although I wouldn't sneeze at them either.

I have 3 fabrics I bought within the last year that match beautifully. One is a reversible bottom-weight with a silvery taupe on one side and a dull aqua on the other. At the same time I bought an aqua jersey knit and a fine linen-look fabric. It could be linen, it was a mystery fabric. They look great together, but there was no "pop" to them. I was holding things against them, and tried the Green Multi Tweed from Nancy Erickson that I got this spring, and it's absolutely perfect! It just made my heart sing, and made me want to sew again right now. What a great find. I want a jacket of the tweed in the same Marfy pattern I'm working on now, pants from the bottom-weight (and there's enough of that for something else too), a tank top from the jersey, and a camp shirt from the linen. I love it when the decisions are made. Even if I change my mind later, it seems like once I have something to change it from it's so much easier to get down to it.

I can't decide whether or not to order the laminated wool fabric that is shown at the bottom of the last post. It's a lightweight sweater knit with no lengthwise stretch, but good crosswise stretch. I don't really know what to do with it. I really like it, and maybe just a knit top is what I should do rather than something more involved. I was thinking of a Burda WOF dress, but it's for 2-way stretch fabric, and I'm not sure this will work. I think it would, but I don't want to stop everything else right now to make a dress 'muslin' with a similar knit.

This is 103B from the 2-2008 issue.

The reviews I've read on this pattern are pretty positive, and I PM'd one of the reviewers who said she thought it ought to work with a one-way stretch knit. They both said the front skirt that underlaps should be full width, which I'd agree with, so then I'd have to figure how much extra fabric, and the skirt at least would need to be lined so it would slide rather than catch on itself. Oh decisions, decisions! Maybe I'll just wait and if the fabric sells out, it wasn't meant to be.

Birgitte just asked such a good question that I'm going to edit this post and add my response.

She's thinking of the same Burda dress pattern, but with silk jersey (yum!) and wonders "What kind of lining would you use?" I honestly hadn't thought it through, but was just thinking vaguely (like so much of my thinking) of a slick lining fabric so the top layer of skirt front would slide over the lower, but of course, it's going to have to stretch. Then a slip came to mind, but that still wouldn't help the top layer/lower layer bit, although I did think about attaching the underlap to a lining layer if I don't have enough fabric to get clear to the side seam. From the layout it looks like I should have no trouble, but you never know. Then I combined my ideas and came up with tricot. I think a very nice quality tricot, especially a satin tricot, such as you'd make a nice slip or lingerie from would be ideal for this. It would stretch, and it would be nice and slick. Nylon is not hot like polyester either. Of course for silk jersey, you might want another stretch silk, but either one would work. I have lots of really nice tricot in some good neutrals, so I think this is a plan!

Wonderful Fabric!

Elliott Berman Textiles was a new name to me when I received a message at Stitcher's Guild that I should take a look and try them. Well, I did and I just received my fabric today, and it is just as wonderful as the very large swatch they had sent. Here's the fabric from their site, and below I'll give you a very detailed description of the fabric in-hand because I think it's impossible to get the feeling of the actual fabric without the swatch in hand, since it's a very complex weave.


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It's a wool with a very dark brown and caramel background. This is a single thread, and the caramel fiber is finer, and wrapped around the darker brown thread very much like a knitting yarn. It's a boucle weave, but very small, low loops.

It has a variegated yarn which is a very short eyelash type woven on the face into squares of about 1/2". The colors are marigold, russet and steel blue. The eyelash also includes a very small percentage of cellophane/shiny eyelashes, which gives the fabric a bit of sparkle when it's in the light, but is otherwise unobtrusive.

There's a thick/thin white yarn (the thin is a thread and the thick is like a blob) which is woven in squares on the back in the spaces between the eyelash squares which shows through a bit in the center of the squares. Its main purpose is drawing the fabric up into a waffle effect so that the eyelash lines form raised squares and the background is the dark/caramel part.

It's extremely light in weight, and looks like it might be a knit, but it isn't. It's a Bill Blass fabric, and it certainly has a lot going for it, since with all this detail, it reads as just a nice fabric until you really begin to look. Anyway, I'm smitten. and I have decided on a jacket and eventually a straight skirt. The jacket pattern I've chosen is Marfy #1234, a Chanel style jacket.


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I've been working on altering the pattern for the last couple days, and I'll be ready to start a muslin pretty soon I think.

And of course, I had to order just one more swatch, and it came with the wool. It's a laminated wool knit, and is a very unique fabric. It's very tempting. You can see a pretty good scan of the front and back below.



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I have a lot of plans, but I've had quite a while to plan. It looks like I'll be able to get some real sewing done soon, and I am ready!

Cream Marfy Jacket

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I finished my jacket made from Marfy 9650. The pattern is from the Fall/Winter 2005/06 catalog. The fabric is a very heavy cream cotton with metallic embossed designs. I still think it's a really pretty fabric, but it was very hard to work with. It had no give to it, and easing was just about impossible. I had to lower the sleeve caps a fair amount to get the sleeves set in. I think they turned out fine, and they're very comfortable, which worried me, but it certainly could have been easier. The raised, embossed designs added to the stiffness of the fabric as well as making it somewhat difficult to do handstitching. The needle just didn't want to go through those areas.

All in all, I think it turned out well. I made some changes, as you can see by looking at the design illustration below. I didn't do the contrast collar or topstitching, and I decided against the pocket after pinning it on several times and attempting to adjust its position to someplace where it would look good. That spot didn't seem to exist, so I ditched it. The only topstitching on the jacket is some edgestitching along the collar and lapel edges. I used a Madeira Rayon thread that was a matching cream with tiny flecks of red, blue, and green, which are almost unnoticeable in the end, but the color match was very good anyway.

I think I have enough fabric left to do a matching skirt if I wish, but I'm not sure I really want one. Perhaps when I have some distance from working with this fabric, and have forgotten my troubles with it.... Here is a side view.


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The design called for a double button frog closure on an angle, and I did a closure made with 2 mother-of-pearl flat rings, a vintage button, and a cord made from suede and linen yarns. I was afraid it wouldn't be too practical, but it seems to hold very well, and it's easy to get the placement correct while wearing it. As with most double-breasted styles though, it looks better closed than open.


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Here's the pattern illustration.


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