January 30, 2011

Jacket muslin, next stage

I'm not numbering the muslins for this jacket anymore. I cut the block, without collar or any other styling, twice but did any number of small alterations to each of them before making the next. What I showed you here before was the second one, but before I changed that. The fact that the fabric I used for the muslins ifrather soft and sticks to all my clothes doesn't help matters.

I did the necessary alterations to the block after that muslin. Mostly some fur
ther tweeking at the shoulder and a small swayback adjustment (I often find these to be over-used in the sewing blogoshere. They come up a lot and in many cases I think the real problem is the waist length. But I drafted this thing to my waist length... It was also just sticking to my skirt pretty badly in that picture, so quite a bit of the bundling was down to that. I overlooking one thing though: wearing heels changes your posture. It causes or increases swayback effects. And I would like to wear heels with my suit).
Then, I started drafting a collar. And I shaped the bottom edge. And adepted that hard-won shoulder shape. I wanted to try out a banded sleeve head. So, in this muslin, there's one normal sleeve with a shoulder pad and the other has the banded sleeve. I shortened the shoulder a bit for that.

And then the fretting began all over again. I had just about convinced myself that it would be OK and the strange bagginess at the chest would sort itself out in the end-product by the use of the appropriate stiffeners. And then, I took pictures to post here. Eew... I's so not there yet!

I tried something I don't do often when drafting (usually, I stubbornly decide that curves are always good and ignore the fact that all RTW and purchased patterns have 'flatter' shapes): I tried measuring my muslin against the orange jacket. And what did I find out? The muslin was a lot wider in chest. About 6 cm, to be precise. Which is an insane amount, equivalent to one and a half dress size... The hip were a little bit bigger, which I need them to be and the waist as about the same. I've roughly pinned the excess and it seems to work. Now, I just have to try and make that work with the sleeves....
Oh, and I did notice I've been too careful with the swayback adjustment, there will be a bit more of that too.
By the time I figured out all of that, it was already getting a bit dark, so you will get to see yet another version of this muslin later.

4 comments:

  1. Wat is een `banded sleeve head`, Lauriana?
    Ik veronderstel dat je engelse lezers je perfect begrijpen. Maar zelfs na googlen weet ik niet wat je bedoelt.
    groet van een trouwe lezeres

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  2. What a process! Thanks for sharing it :). It is definitely much improved from the last version we saw, so you are definitely on the right track. The different sleeve-heads are really interesting, too (I like the banded one), as is the difference the shoulder-pad makes.

    Good luck!

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  3. Anna, mijn Nederlands-talige boek noemt het een 'band-vormige mouwkop'. Ik gebruikte dus een letterlijke vertaling. In mijn vorige post over dit jasje staat de tekening van de mouw.

    Or in English: For anyone wondering about that sleeve shape, scroll down to the previous jacket-post. There's a drawing of the banded sleevehead there.

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  4. Something worth checking might be the overall balance - I think you have Aldrich don't you? She touches on it somewhere in her book from memory.
    I'm liking the banded sleeve head too!

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