Lining the Style Arc Marni

I sewed a lining into the jacket I showed you in the last post, and thanks to the feedback from all the lovely ladies at the ASG sewing group at Rhodes on Saturday I've decided that this jacket is completed and is good enough to wear - a great outcome for what was essentially a test version. 

I travelled into work this morning with my husband and I forced him take some photos for me next to an old sandstone building near our offices, so you all get a different background than my usual lounge room. I wore it today with a black dress I'd made pre-blogging days (Vogue 8280), so it's too bad I'm not doing MMM because I nailed it today.  The jacket was very comfortable and kept me warm on a chilly day and it wore so much better with a lining as it didn't catch on my clothes at all. It does need some slight fitting adjustments for the next version - mainly a forward shoulder adjustment and a bit more interfacing, but overall this one is still pretty good.



excuse those squinty eyes - it was early morning and I'm soooo tired!

For the closure I decided to sew a loop from some black hat elastic into one side and sewed on a button which was much easier than fiddling with a buttonhole or doing a covered snap:

It also looks much better on the inside having a lining covering up all those seams:

Making a lining for it wasn't that difficult either, and whilst I don't particular like doing tutorials since I'm not an expert in these things (my pet hate is newbie sewists doing tutorials on their blogs) I will share how I did here partly because BeaJay asked me on Saturday but mainly so that when I go to do this again I remember exactly how I did it!

First up the fabric - back in 2011 when I wondered what fabric to use to line this New Look 6000 dress I made from ponte, a few people suggested a stretch knit fabric so I picked up a roll of black stretch knit from the Remnant Warehouse on one of their two for one rolls Tuesday, which has a soft, slippery hand almost like fabric you would use for a slip. I still haven't lined that purple ponte dress yet, but the fabric is perfect for lining this jacket.  It does have more stretch to it than the ponte I used for the outer fabric, but I figured that would be fine.

Next the pattern pieces - for the lining I used the side front, sleeve, back peplum and back pattern pieces as drafted.  I didn't add a pleat to the back pattern piece for wearing ease that you would normally see in a jacket at the neckline because I made the lining from stretch fabric.  I drafted new pattern pieces for the front and front peplum.

For the jacket front lining pattern piece, I laid the front facing piece over the jacket front piece and traced off a new pattern piece, remembering to add a seam allowance and rounding off the pointy corner bit because that was designed to be sewn down to the shoulder seam which now isn't needed because it's going to be sewn to the lining instead: 



neckline as per the pattern drafting



neckline when rounded off for the lining

For the front peplum lining pattern piece I made a new pattern piece by folding over the centre front facing bit and folding the dart over too and added a seam allowance to the centre front, so that I had a pattern piece that was the same shape but much narrower.

Finally the construction order - I sewed all the lining pieces together, and then sewed the lining to the jacket at the collar/centre front and the sleeves ends (not the cuffs).  Then I hemmed the jacket (2cm deep) and lining (3cm deep) separately to each other so that the lining would hang freely which I figured was the best way to deal with the pleated fabric at the front. 

I sewed the lining to the jacket on the inside along the waist seam allowance just to anchor the lining in place and so it wouldn't twist around when being worn. Then I sewed the cuffs back on, not bothering to sandwich the raw edges in the middle of the cuff layer because it won't be visible and I was feeling lazy, but next time I probably would just to make it look better.

And that's all it took - pretty easy really and I still can't understand why the pattern didn't include a lining.

the UGLIEST fabric you've ever seen

I proclaim that blog title as a fact, not a question. I apologise for what I'm about to do to your retinas, but Lizzie asked me in the comments to the last post to share how I make muslins (aka a toile.)

First step is to find a fabric from my stash that I won't ever wear in public but is similar in fabric content, weight and drape to the fabric I plan to use for the final garment. And this fabric certainly fits the bill:

In my defence though, I often buy fabric in bulk lots either from the op shop or garage sales and that's how I end up with gems like these in the stash. But since I'm a hoarder (albeit an organised one and not out of control yet), I never throw any out, no matter what level of ugliness it is. But clearly even ugly fabric comes in handy sometimes!

Now I'm not a professional dress maker, and despite the amount of muslins I've been making recently I don't even make them all that often really. So this ain't a professional tutorial, I'm just sharing with you what I do.

After picking the right fabric, I tend to make the first muslin straight off the pattern with just a few alterations to the pattern that I always make such as a sway back alteration and a narrow shoulder adjustment. I don't bother with interfacing or facings although I do fold under the finished edge 1.5cm so that the finished neckline isn't lower than thought at the end (yeah I learnt that one the hard way). I put both sleeves in too, because getting a good fit around the arms and shoulders is important to me. And now that I've discovered that I have one shoulder lower than the other I now realise why the fit on both shoulders always turned out differently!

And then while I'm wearing the garment, standing in front of the mirror, I basically pinch and tuck and fold and pin the garment to my desired fit, and draw on the garment where I need to take it out (usually around the hip). Literally, like this:

And then I unpick all the seams, transfer the changes to the pattern or make a new pattern piece if it's too different. I've read some pattern making books that recommend using the muslin pieces as the actual pattern which makes sense if you're making something once, but since I want to get rid of the ugly fabric eventually but keep the modified pattern for future usage, I just make the changes to the pattern paper and stick a post it note in the envelope of the changes I made.

If I'm lucky there's not too many changes after the first muslin and I'll then take my chances and go on to make the final version. This dress however needed lots of reworking, to the side panel alone I've reduced the side seam quite a lot, pinched a little excess out of curve of the princess seam, as well as reducing the width of the front panel and the back panel too!

So I'm now onto my second muslin for this one, but it's looking promising. I'm so looking forward to finishing the muslin for this one and binning that ugly fabric - it's depressing sewing with it!

Sorry for the short and rather lame post, as I said I'm not an expert on this so I don't have too much to say about the topic. I just do what works for me, even if it rather unorthodox (or slipshod). Plus I'm convalescing at this point in time, I have another bout of tonsillitis. First one for this year, but after the five bouts last year I wasn't too keen to see it come back so early! My doctor says one more bout and she'll recommend I have them removed which sounds really painful but could also mean a week of ice cream yay!