Kiss My Stitch

Pattern Description:
“There’s nothing prim here! Cut short, close-fitting and with a back peplum, this club jacket is elegant and bewitch-ingly feminine. The white piping emphasizes its very fashionable lines.”

Pattern Sizing:
38-46
Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it?
Right down to the gold buttons!
Were the instructions easy to follow?
Oh boy, these might as well have been in greek. I took them to coffee in the morning and STUDIED them. (Wish I’d studied this much in chemistry class). After reading several dozen times they started to make some sense.
What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
Love love love the piping – very trendy right now (see Nordstroms). Love the creative lines of the jacket with the piping, the front pockets that are actually pockets and the decorative sleeve flaps.

There is heavy labor involved – sewing the piping in, and a lot of top stitching, including all of the piping and some of the seam lines.
Fabric Used:
Navy blue stretch poplin from Joanns. It has textured lines through it.
Pattern Alterations or any design changes you made:
Sewing the piping in was not that difficult, believe it or not!

• Absolutely make a muslin first – this jacket is meant to be fitted and I needed to make a lot of adjustments to fit perfectly. There is a front piece with large dart, side piece, side bottom peplum and back with a large bottom pleat. With the botton peplum piece, it makes it a little more difficult for fit.You want to get the top pieces fitting perfectly before you sew on the peplum and do all of the top stitching.
• Joanns only sells cotton piping, this jacket absolutely needs satin piping so I made my own. Use thin polyester satin, cut in bias strips and sew over the cotton piping and voila.
• The collar – was extremely difficult to fit the way they have you do it. The instructions call for you to stitch the upper and lower collar on to the jacket, then bla bla bla (about 2 or 3 confusing paragraphs to muddle through). I could not get it to sit flat correctly using their method and it was difficult to get the piping to line up at the corners. After ripping out the collar several times, and hopelessly fraying the fabric, I recut the collar pieces and used the standard method. I sewed the upper and lower collar together with the piping, turned right side out and attached it to the neck edge Click Here. The collar laid flat and the piping was easier to match up with the piping on the front edge.
• Some tricky hand sewing was involved under the collar to get the piping to meet up exactly

• Pattern calls for hand sewing the sleeves hems before sewing one of the sleeve seams. I sewed both sleeve seams THEN machine sewed the sleeve hem. With all the top stitching, I thought it looked just fine.
• Not a hope of the sleeves fitting! I chopped about an inch and a half off the sleeve cap and they were still a little bulky. Lots of ripping out and adjusting until it would fit correctly. The pattern calls for shoulder pads so I found the thinnest ones I could find to boost up the sleeves slightly – which did the trick.
• Piping adds a lot of bulk and even with pressing the back pleat it would not lie completely flat. I tacked each side of the pleat on the inside at the bottom.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
Now that I have a perfectly fitting muslin, I may make the other version – without the piping. I would recommend it, but not for the faint of heart!
Conclusion:
Not all fun to make but I love the end result and it fits me perfectly. Not sure if I would call this a college blazer jacket, I think it looks too flash for that. Trying to decide what to wear with it. I thought white linen pants would look sharp, but my husband – started humming the theme from the Love Boat! Oh dear, it does look a little like Julie, the cruise directors outfit! Now,where’s my clipboard?!