Faux Chanel with Simplicity 4273

My attempt this year is to make a suit-a-month although I didn't get started until February.  Since I feel that I've finally gotten over the fear of doing a lining Thanks to Karen I was able to do my first suit for the year and moved on to the second one.

March's suit is New Look 6853, which is a lined jacket with pocket variations paired with Simplicity 4273 pants.

For NL6853 I used a burgandy/brown denim with cross-wise stretch from Walmart about 2 years ago. The fabric was downright hard.  I washed & dried it, but it still had some stiffness, then soaked it in fabric softner and washed & dried a second time.  After the second washing, drying & ironing it was workable.  In reviewing chanel style jackets, I noticed that several had a boxy look and noted that I needed a pattern with some shaping.  NL6853 has front, side front, back & side back pieces that would provide shaping.

The instructions for NL6853 was very easy in that after reviewing them, I basically sailed along on my own.  There was an instance where I referred to the instructions during the lining installation, I wondered if I should do facings for the jacket, but after reading various comments regarding chanel jackets, I went with inserting the lining without the facings.  All of the seams were sewed using 1.7 stitch width and pinked.

 For the lining I made a pit stop at Fulton Fabric Store. Luckily they had one-way stretch for $4.00/yd.  The sales clerk kept emphasizing that it was burberry, but at $4.00/yd I knew something was amiss, and continued with my purchase.  I just needed one-way stretch lining... point blank and didn't care if it was burberry or blueberry. 

To ensure that the lining did not roll to the fashion fabric side, I edge stitched starting from the front bottom and continued along to the other side.

The pockets had to be removed and repositioned higher.  I have taken to using a stitch width of 1.7 and it was a pain removing those stitches.  I still feel that the pockets could've been a tad bit higher.

The lining was hand stitched at the hem line and as usual I ended up with my lining very close to the fashion fabric hem, one day I will get it right.  It is one of the reasons that I want to do a suit-a-month to sharpen my skills on jacket making, for now it will suffice.  The jacket back has a center back seam and the lining was cut on the fold adding 1" for more ease.

However, it did pose a problem when I decided to add the chain to the hem line. I felt that I was perched on the very edge of a cliff and trying to keep from falling off when I hand stitched it to the hem line.  Yeah I know overkill.  By the way did you notice anything about the ummm uh... burberry logo.

Ok.. moving along.  I also did tone-on-tone decorative stitching along the jacket, as well as the pocket flap... hard to see but just wanted my personal touch.

Here is a snippet of the sleeve

Oh, around 3:30am Sunday morning I felt that something was missing, but with sleep harrassing me... I didn't realize til 8:00am this morning that I'd forgotten to put in the shoulder pads...lol. 

Although the jacket doesn't have any closures, I wanted some type of closure and settled on 5/8" heavy duty snap fasteners.

The companion to this jacket is S4273.... talk about easy peasy... think I found a new pattern that could possibly become a TNT after a few more tries.  The pants went together effortlessly, no lining for these pants, and used my rtw pants as a template to tweak the pants pattern pieces.  The crotch is long and by using my rtw template, I was able to tweak the crotch. The pants has a side zipper with a high waist band, again by using my rtw template, I reduced the waist an 1" or so on the pants pattern pieces to accommodate the high waist band.  The front waist band has a seam... I inadvertently sliced the band on the fold and ended up having to cut the band in half and sew together... umm yeah... that's me... Ms. Betty the Blunder.

Hope to get a photo wearing the suit this week. 

Have a Great Week!