Line Jumping

I ended up with a whole evening at home last night to myself.

I should've gotten a good start on those white shirts in the queue. But I was sick of the queue and not ready to make another shirt just yet.

About 6:50 the fever hit, and under its influence I pulled out the cutting table and mats, the large houndstooth on top in the photo (from the upholstery remnant table at Hancock's!) and Louise Cuttings Anything But Ordinary jacket, which I'd traced last weekend, and started cutting.

It went slower than I expected; the houndstooth is large enough that the pattern needs to be at least lined up. The fabric is actually jacquard weave, so the wrong side is a negative of the right side, so I was continually reminding myself I had to match a tan 'tooth' to a dark 'tooth'. I even resorted to counting threads in the pattern! Plus, I decided to cut it single-layer to make sure it stayed lined up, then I goofed on the first pattern piece I laid on the fabric and cut it with too much waste space. So I had to finegle to get the rest on, and ultimately I sewed a couple of chunks together (matched carefully at the seam, of course...took three tries...)in order to have a strip long enough to lay the collar on. I put the pattern's fold line on the seam, so the seam is in the CB.

It ended up taking about an hour and a half to get it cut out.

But it went together fairly well, even though I had extra seam bulk at the center back. The only problem I had came from the shredding edges of the fabric, even though I handled them carefully. I learned that with a bulky, raveling fabric it would be better to draft a pattern for a back facing, rather than do the campshirt-style back neck finish that's indicated. If this were made from a nice linen, like the ones I saw in Louise's booth in Atlanta, that probably wouldn't be necessary.

And that fabric is really, really shreddy. It's very large horizontal yarns woven together with very fine vertical threads, and the yarns just about fall out of the fabric near any cut edge. I ended up stitching, serging and topstitching, or serging, stitching, pressing open and double topstitching all the seams.

Anyway, if it had been a cooperative fabric I think I'd've finished the jacket easily before everyone got home from the events of the evening around 11:30. As it is, I've still got the jacket hem, final topstitching and buttonholes and buttons (I found some cool wooden buttons in my Grandmother's box that I'm strongly considering) left to go.

Not quite the quick project I intended, but it was fun to try it! And the fabric is very malleable, cottony and warm...I'm going to enjoy wearing it.

Not to mention it's houndstooth...which is hot-hot-hot this fall. I'm amazed that I'm actually going to be on trend. ;)