Some time again I decided to make myself a Chanel style jacket using the pattern I received when I bought the The Iconic Tweed Jacket , instructor being Lorna Knight on Craftsy platform. As this type of jacket involves a lot of work so I decided that it’s a good idea to make a toile and started to prep the fabric before construction (I blogged about it here and here if you fancy a read).

For my jacket I used a wool mix fabric I bought at Abakan locally especially for this jacket. Also, I’ve been using Claire B Schaeffer Couture Sewing: The Couture Cardigan Jacket book to help me in my endeavour, mainly because I did not want to keep going back to the video class (sometimes I enjoy having the information in writing). I really thought that I had this in the bag once I finished all the prep before the actual construction. I was happy that my hand sewing days on this jacket are over. Oh, how wrong was I!

I was happy I finally got to the sewing machine stage, I partially constructed the front, back and sleeve pieces for both the main fabric and the lining.

I even catch-stitched the seam allowances down to keep them flat (forgetting that I actually had to grade them down before. Good news about this is that if put on a lot of weight I could let it out. Highly doubt that. I am not a fan of alterations).

Then I started the quilting of the lining on the main fabric. This was the reason why I picked a fabric with so many lines. It was easy to pick the lines to stitch along, making sure my lines were fairly straight and the are not visible on the right side. Happy days! (It seems I am a fan of tricks that make my life easier when sewing – less time spent on doing prep for the actual process). OPS!

Then, I was blessed with needing to to more hand sewing. Blah….. Had to do the shoulder and side seams on the lining by hand. The process of lining the fabric, pining it so that it is in line with the shell’s seams it’s quite interesting and makes one appreciate how long garment construction took in the days before sewing machines existed.

I then trimmed the hem and lining and finished it off at the bottom as well. By now I was so thinking what other project I could work on to take a break for this. I wonder if I will finish this jacket this year? …

I did the same with the centre front pieces. They were first pinned together, I tried to match the best I could the horizontal lines and then gone to hand stitch them together. This took me a while as well.

Now I have a bodice that’s waiting for it’s sleeves. But I’ve had enough for now, I need another break.

This picture below is my new nemesis. I was not very successful at using a thimble. Didn’t help that to was way to big for little fingers. Grrrr…

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p dir=”ltr”>I will leave it for a while to rest waiting for me to carry on. The plus side of it is that I still have time to decide what trims to use if any on the outside and I am yet to get some chain for the hem.