Completed at last - Peplum Jacket in Green Faux leather.

This jacket is yet another item that was far harder to actually make than to dream about making. I had the idea back at the wonderful New Year when I made my plans like many of us do to sew certain things that I actually need.

I made the very successful and easy to make faux leather skirt and wanted a jacket.


I have never made a peplum jacket so went with Burds Easy. Its the second item I have made from a Burda Easy and to be honest they are NOT EASY.

I think ts called Burda Easy because you do not need to trace and the styles are very teen inspired. Don't let that put you off though because they are also very wearable. Possibly the problem is all things I have made are the difficult patterns and I am taken in by the magazine title. The shirt I made worked and this has also worked.

They just take longer than I expected. But then most things do.







I suppose I really like to churn out fast easy projects which helps with blogging because I have something to write about every week, but really it is time I started to spend longer, and make better more involved clothing so apologies if the blog posts get further appart.

When you read all this stuff about being a successful blogger, a post a week seems to be a must, but really my blogging is a way to connect with people like me who sew, because its a lonely world otherwise. Its not really about being a blogger. Thats just the means to an end. And its a very successful way to feel connected. I a not really into Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc but I do enjoy blogging.

Though blogging does also mean you see your makes differently because you see photos when perhaps you would not normally take any and then you see things as others do and you see how something does not hang quite right - see my peplum!

Or is that just a crease?

I think blogging does help with perfecting your sewing. Also when people tell you where you went wrong that is so helpful. It really is a good thing to get criticism and advice from other sewists. Or sewers.

I will still aim to do a post a week or more but when all you have achieved is unpicking something ten times it gets a bit difficult.

Well this faux leather is ok for unpicking as well which surprised me especially after the antics with my T shirt.

On this occassion, I immediately unpicked when I went wrong  rather than go away and leave it.

It went wrong when I put in the zip, and later when I tried to finish off the neck.

Loads of problems in fact possibly down to my inaccurate cutting out with blunt scissors. Yes, I have to get round to buying some new ones asap because sharpening has not really helped much. I think there must be a burr stopping them working properly. They no longer cut along the entire blade.




Well the actual attaching of the zip, whilst giving me some thought to get it right, went OK. As explained in my previous post about constructing this jacket

This Burda Easy is in German so I need to be a bit creative. But then, I have yet to follow a Burda pattern that does things in what I think of as the right order anyway. I usually have to wing it.

I tried to sew the topstitching down the side of the zip, where you get the zip overlap - not sure what this is meant to be called. I carefully pinned onto the stitchline and I sewed from the right side. It went OK at the start then just all puckered up.

Disaster thinks me and ruined jacket from my lovely fabric. And this fabric was very cheap. this bit was just 99p for about 3m, but I still love it, it was such a  bargain. I cannot replace for that price since the Ebay seller has since realised what it is she is selling. It now goes for £7 for 2m. Still Ok but this was much cheaper. I was very lucky to get it in the frst place. Green is not my first choice for leather but not a bad choice when this cheap and I do wear dark and bright greens a lot.

I also thought it will look great made into this jacket. But I am tired at the end of a busy weekend and get on with sewing to try and get this finished and I HAVE to immediately un-pick when it all went wrong. If it was any other fabric I would have done this later to avoid slipping with the stitch ripper when tired. I needed to stop but I persevered. I very slowly unpicked and forced myself to take a break half way through to ensure I did not destroy this.


Had a cup of tea and then when I had already decided to stop I just went ahead and sewed it with the right side down over the same stitch marks. I never pinned this time and its not quite perfect but does actually look passable. I do not think I would have done a better job later taking more time so thats the best I am going to manage I think. It will have to do. Its a bit narrower at one side at the top of the zip than the other but does not look too bad on.

So then I hand sewed the peplum lining up. I needed to add tucks on the reverse to make the peplum work. Again probably imperfect cutting. I think its is still not quite rigt in the way it hangs but only realised that after seeing the pictures. Definitely seems to be pulling a bit to one side (see the picture above)  so I may get round to undoing and resewing this at some point.

Not now though because I have really had quite enough of this jacket and I am prepared to wear it as it is for a few wearings at least. I will see if it hangs out first because I did leave this in a pile of UFOs for over a month so have not kept it well and it did get creased. Being coated cotton I feel worried to iron it so will leave it for now and wait.



Then I couldn't get the collar to work either. I unpicked that 3 times before waking up in the middle of the night with a realisation that bias binding - I already have some in dark green which sort of tones - in a  band attached to both the facing and the collar would sort the problem out. I think the facing was a touch too short but it works in the end. It was a bit fiddly to sew to each side but I got it done very quickly one morning. I hand sewed the inside collar next to the zip ending and the neck facings. The collar as you can see is higher one side or at least the facing shows more one side than the other!
It is a bit too tight possibly too or maybe my shoulders are too wide (they are wide!) so next time I think I may need to do some pattern adjusting here - wow I am getting so knowledgable now.

Wouldn't have even considered adjusting a pattern a year ago!

I have currently no idea what I need to do to correct this so will need to read up on the best way to adjust this - any help or advice on pattern adjusting for wide shoulders appreciated.

It has taken me months to make it, but mainly it has been the fact I needed to sew the cuffs by hand since I had such problems with the rest of the top stitching I decided not to bother to sew topstiching to attach these - at least I think that is what Burda is telling me to do, but as explained its in German and my german language skills are limited so I am going by pictures here. Since I couldn't handle the hand sewing  and that meant I could not attach them any other way, this has had to wait till I got round to it which as it turned out was several weeks.


I am now in exactly the same boat with a coat I am making,  and I have to hem the coat by hand and attach the lining which is a BIG project but more later on that, hence this was the smaller project so I finally got it finished. 


Since its taken me so very long to sort out the problems with this jacket I really have had enough.  I need this project to end!

I do not want to scrap it but its not very good really. But it does work despite all the mistakes and my next one should in theory work better. I am reasonably happy despite my collar which is definitely not right. It looks OK according to my other half who can be very critical. I can wear this despite the neck, because unless I do the zip right up, which is something I am very unlikely to do anyway, you actually cannot really tell its wonky. Having long hair probably hides things too so I will try not to tie it back when wearing this!
And really I should now move on I think and maybe make another more perfect version of this and use this as my muslin. Maybe a size larger too! And with adjustments............




Sad I had to go and make my first attempt from my faux leather but then they do say make a muslin first don't they. Wise words in this case but a bit late for me to realise that!

So here is is with my green skirt:

And here I feel cosplay-ish with my green faux leather leggings:

 
Could do with a sword or something here!

Yes. its OK despite its faults and again it was a real learning curve and after all thats the whole point of this blog.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave any comments - especially if you have advice on how to do this better or make adjustments for wide shoulders because everywhere else it fits, because thats what I need for my next version of this pattern - and I haven't a clue where to start. Maybe I should cut a larger size and try to grade in to the waist?

Thanks for reading,

Bracken

Burda Easy Peplum jacket in faux leather

To go with last weeks skirt here:
http://brackencrafts.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/first-project-of-2018-drak-green-faux.html

I decided to use my faux leather for this peplum jacket from Burda Easy autumn/winter 2017. I decided to buy this magazine despite it being unavailable in English or even in the UK other than off ebay.

I bought it from a German seller so I am trying to fathom out the instructions which lucky for me are the feature in the magazine so lots of useful pictures to help me.

I read about Burda Easy autumn/winter 2017 on DrT;s blog. I tend to read DrT because she gives great reviews of patterns and especially of Burda magazines. You can read about this magazine here:
https://doctortdesigns.com/2017/08/21/burda-easy-fallwinter-2017/


I tend to disagree with everything DrT likes and like everything she hates, but either way DrT gives a really good review of the next Burda magazine as well as reasonably regular udates on new patterns from the big 4.

I had some serious issues with this pattern. I think probably most of them were down to me trying to cheat with adding seam allowances so instead of using the Tools by Hollie tool which I won via the lovely The Monthly Stitch folk with this outfit here:
https://themonthlystitch.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/brights/

I decided to try and take a short cut and just estimate all around the pattern. Bad idea! Never do this.

I have had to recut half of this ( luckily still have loads of this faux leather) and then adjust and resew half of the seams and even then the sleeve seams and in fact most of the seams do not quite line up despite my fiddling with this for ages. Its pretty much a disaster in fact tho will be wearable but not as good as I think it could have been. Also if I make a second one of these I want to use a larger size back piece but keep the front as it is. I am finding it somewhat "snug" to say the least. That is partly down to my bodging to try ad get it to work. The moral here: never cut out anything when you are tired at the end of the day and take the time to use the right tools for the job instead of trying the "gestimate" because it simply does not work and I should by now know better!

I had serious issues with the sleeves:
This is the right sleeve:

But the left sleeve is OK! 

This is the good left shoulder/ sleeve

So I decided to measure both and see what I had done differently. The right shoulder was slighly longer so I unpicked and restitched then redid the sleeve which was not easy having sewed this by overlocker so there was nothing left to cut off and I had to be very careful to not make it too much smaller. Well its a tight fit but it wll hopefully wear in. Its been a learning curve this one.

This is after I fixed it.

So I have yet to put the zip into this because I have spent so long adjusting things to try to
correct my bad cutting out. Hopefully it will eventually work and if possible this jacket will not becme yet another UFO. Incidentally ALL my UFOs seem to be jackets or coats!

I have no help today since my other half has gone out so I cannot take photos of this on me so I hope you can see on Harriet how its coming together.

The peplum lining looks a bit like a puffball skirt here because it needs to be hand sewed to the waistline

So to finish this all I need to do really is to attach the inside peplum to the waistband where as you can see when its on Harriet that it is hanging down and to hand stitch in the wrist linings as well as add a zip and do the facings but its coming together.

 

Hopefully once finished it will look ok and I will post the finished article later. I am just hoping it will fit since I thought it a bit tight when I tried it on as I already said!

Thanks for reading

Bracken