Kwik Sew 4162

After months of radio silence – I’m back.  I won’t go into long explanations.  Let’s just say that I needed a break from life.  I meant to start back to blogging in September.  That didn’t happen.  October.  Didn’t happen.  Then I saw Faye’s post about blogging every day, and today is November 1^st, and somehow that really put the firecracker under me to get going.  Now don’t expect miracles around here.  “Every day” is highly unlikely.  Even though quite a lot of sewing happened in the interim, there are the pictures to get caught up on.  The weather is so lousy these days, I’m beginning to forget what sun looks like, so I’ll be playing around with taking pictures in less than stellar conditions.  Once again – don’t expect miracles.  I’m trying to get over my perfection streak, and I’ll just have to live with less-than-perfect pictures, so long as they pretty well show what’s what.  So without much further ado…

K4162

When Joyce was closing up the sewing shop in March, you can imagine the prices on everything were just too good to be true, and despite trying to refrain from cluttering up the pattern drawers at home, quite a few Kwik Sew patterns did come home with me – mostly jackets, if I remember correctly.  This one isn’t exactly “my thing” going by the pictures on the envelope.  On the other hand, it’s a simple cardigan jacket for wovens, with bust darts on the front (I disappeared said darts, because I don’t need them) and darts in the back and just enough shaping that the whole thing doesn’t hang like a box.

I used a suedey (is that a word?) knit – much too soft for a jacket, so I fused knit interfacing to every piece.

I added a pocket, because how often do I say - “What idiot didn’t put pockets in this jacket?”   Oh, and I had this one metal zipper with the cutest pull tab, and it needed a place to go.  Too bad I didn’t have two matching zippers, but … one pocket is better than none.

I made one crucial mistake.  I fused the interfacing to all the pieces once they were cut.  My fabric shrunk lengthwise.  Should have block fused before cutting, and then there would have been less cutting, but … I didn’t.  Live and learn.  I ended up having to add a facing to the hem to get the correct length of jacket.  The sleeves became “bracelet length”.  No big deal, but aggravating nonetheless.

Sorry - fuzzy picture 

I also added a lining.  Didn’t want to look at fused-on-knit-interfacing and it certainly helps with getting the jacket on and off.

Just for the record – this jacket was actually sewn in the late Spring.  We had cold weather for so long (before it became unbearably hot and humid) I just couldn’t switch over to summer sewing.  I popped in shoulder pads that were just a tad too thick, just because they were pre-made and I was being lazy.  Then (finally) came the hot summer and this jacket just hung and hung, waiting for me to replace the shoulder pads.  This week I finally succumbed – made some ¼ inch pads and … I have a wearable jacket.

We’ll see how this fabric performs.  A few years back, I made a t-shirt dress out of the same fabric (slightly different colour brown).  After a few washes, it became far too limp to wear as a dress.  The snakeskin print has all but washed out.  I cut it down to a tunic.  It might even get cut down further to a t-shirt.  It’s wearable, but…  This jacket is certainly not going to get washed, so we’ll see for just how long the fabric will look presentable.