Oooh la la! A classic French jacket

The very cold weather we have been having in these parts lately has meant quite a  few nights on the lounge under a blanket but it has resulted in me finally finishing my classic French jacket. Sure, it's many months after I started making this jacket at Susan Khaljie's week long course in February but to be honest, I still can't quite believe how many hours of work has gone into this jacket - all that hand-stitching certainly takes time.

Admittedly, since I last posted about this jacket back in February I didn't do much work on it because the weather had been too hot - I couldn't find the motivation when I knew I wouldn't wear it straight away. But this is very much needed though, and even though my outer fabric is quite lightweight and loosely woven, with the silk fabric lining it's a very warm jacket.

Sewing on the trim is quite time consuming, and luckily I kept my trim quite simple so I had less work to do than some of the ladies in my course. The white grosgrain ribbon is hand-stitched down the centre of the ribbon, and the black gimp braid is hand-stitched on both edges. It's about 5m around the jacket and cuffs, so that is 15m of hand-stitching of the trim alone!

I agonised over that trim and buttons. There aren't many stores in Sydney with a wide range, so it wasn't easy finding something that would work. I was lucky to have stumbled across the white grosgrain ribbon from Tessuti, but I couldn't find any flat black ribbon to my liking so I went with braided gimp. The buttons are from a store called Buttons Buttons Buttons now located in the Dymocks Building on George St - if you are ever in the Sydney CBD you should definitely drop in because there are literally thousands there to choose from. I narrowed it down to three choices, but went with the white and black stripe button in the end because I thought it looked a bit more modern.

The other big area of hand-stitching is the lining. All the lining seams internally are hand-stitched, and then the lining is stitched to the edge of the jacket around the entire edge of the jacket and cuffs. The traditional chain, which is placed along the bottom of the hem to help the jacket hang properly, is also hand-stitched:

My jacket is cropped to hip length so I've decided to leave off the pockets at the front but now I'm wondering if the front looks too plain. After all, the pockets (either two or four) are a signature look of the classic French jacket.

When I wore this jacket to work last week I kept the jacket done up because it's really cold in my office and I like the symmetry of the trim along the centre front. The neckline is really high though so I had to leave the top hook & eye undone so that I could hunch over my computer without choking. Susan advised making the neckline quite high because the eye would be drawn to the lower edge of the white trim due to the high contrast between black and white and not the upper edge of the jacket. 

My favourite aspect of this jacket is the fit - with Susan's expert pinning and tweaking I've managed to get a very close fit around the shoulders and the lower back which are areas I always struggle with. I think the fit of a jacket around the shoulder is the key to a good looking garment, but with my narrow and forward sloping shoulders I don't always achieve a close fit.

I've even bought a vintage bakelite brooch off ebay to wear with this jacket, which I think is a very sweet look:

Being a classic black and white jacket its pretty easy to find many things to wear it with, including my recently re-made wide leg pants:

So will I make another classic French jacket? Definitely! I may leave off the trim in future versions because that is the time consuming part and it makes the jacket very distinctive, and instead just make a simple collarless jacket which would suit my corporate wardrobe really well. I've done the hard yards with Susan's help to get the pattern to fit me perfectly, so it would be a waste not to make more. Watch this space....

Half finished little French jacket

Six days of uninterrupted sewing, surrounded by beautiful fabrics, away from household responsibilities and sewing with a renowned expert sounds like the dream doesn't it? In reality it's exhausting! I spent all of last week doing the French jacket sewing course with Susan Khaljie and despite sewing from 8am to 6pm everyday I still didn't finish it. I don't have much left to do - I need to hunt down some trim to finish sewing on my jacket, put on the buttons and pockets and hand stitch the lining closed. Getting close though!

This pattern is Susan's own pattern, which apparently is drafted exactly like a Chanel jacket with a close fitting body, high neckline and a three piece sleeve with a jutting out sleeve vent so you can attach that eponymous trim:

image via susankhaljie.com

Work on this jacket started well before the course though, I made three muslins before the course and still found that a lot of fitting tweaks were still needed:

You can see in the above photos that it's too wide for me and there's excess fabric around the armscye. However, a few minutes with Susan and the excess is all pinned out:

One side has been fitted but not the other, which is why I look so lopsided in the above photos. The calico actually becomes the pattern pieces, so after this I pulled apart all the seams, pinched out the excess and got down to sewing the jacket. So why does it take so long to make such a simple jacket?

Well, there's a lot of hand stitching involved - the lining pieces at every seam line are hand sewn shut, and the sleeves are sewn in by hand too. There was also continual fitting checks, because the traditionally used fabric of tweed and boucle are loosely woven and behave quite differently to calico. Here I am part way through with the body done but not the sleeves:

Some of the ladies in my class were sewing with the most beautiful Chanel fabrics that cost hundreds of dollars per metre and were ordered specially from Mendel Goldberg in New York. My fabric on the other hand, came from The Fabric Store during their recent sale and is an interesting wool/polyester mix but certainly wasn't very expensive. It seems to have black and white bobbly yarn topstitched to the fabric, so it's quite a textural fabric and is quite lofty which meant that the quilting stitches sank right into the fabric and are invisible.

Finding trim and buttons though is quite the challenge. It's the key aspect of a jacket like this, and there are only a few stores scattered throughout the city and suburbs selling it which means it's quite a hunting expedition. I managed to find some white grosgrain ribbon that had been folded origami style from Tessuti, but I am still on the hunt for some narrow trim to go down the centre of the white ribbon because it looks a little plain.

So even though I didn't finish the jacket (actually no one in the course did), I've certainly learnt so much. Whilst I think my sewing skills are fairly advanced, I'm a very functional sewer and in no way is anything I make couture - I like to do as little hand sewing as possible! However, I have come to realise that a beautiful inside of a garment which neat hand stitches is a thing of beauty and that precision sewing after making muslins does result in a great outcome.

If you ever get the opportunity to do a course with Susan Khaljie I can highly recommend it - sure it's expensive but she has so much knowledge to pass on. But if not, I hear her video is very informative as well. I am now about to do a two day skills and techniques course with her, where I will no doubt discover how shoddy my techniques are and how much I have yet still to learn....