The White Velvet Jacket - Part 2

Fitting

First, thank you all so much for you enthusiastic and congratulatory remarks regarding Midnight Garden! I am amazed that you all stuck with it through the whole series - the jacket got to be quite an epic after all the things I didn't like, changed and reworked.

Due to the cost and time involved in making the white velvet jacket, I felt it would be wise to make a muslin before cutting any fabric. Here's the front and back. Bear in a mind that my junior photographer took these at a slight angle; I normally do not lean to one side (the back picture is particularly bad)!

This is a straight Burda 36. I did have to grade down to this size, as the pattern was published starting with size 38. For starters, I am going to:

1. shorten the sleeves by one inch
2. shorten the neck to waist length by one inch
3. put a thicker shoulder pad into the right shoulder

The first two are my usual petite adjustments for Burda, or for practically any pattern for that matter. The third looks like it will be a permanent adjustment, too, especially for garments with shoulder pads.

A few alterations to the jacket later, namely the sleeve and body length, plus dropping the back neck a bit (there was a big wrinkle at the back neck where the collar met the jacket), and we have this, pictures courtesy of the other junior photographer:

This is a bit better, although I still feel that there might still be a bit of tweaking to be done. Maybe not. I'm not sure, actually. I'm a bit concerned about the small wrinkles on the bodice around the armscye both front and back. I'm thinking that might actually be a function of the fabric used for the muslin. It is definitely more drapey than the interfaced cotton underlined velvet will be. To that end, I did fuse some interfacing under the blue just to see what a stiff version would look like and it didn't wrinkle. I am thinking of raising the shoulder seam just on the back like I did with the trench coat - just a little, 1/2" or less. That will probably take care of those wrinkles. I think the sleeves hang fairly well, so I know they are not the problem.

So, help me out here. Is there anything I'm missing or something else I should try to improve? What I don't want to do is overfit or over analyze the whole thing.

Q/A: Regarding the Midnight Garden lining crickets, Vicki was very, very observant and noticed that, "And on the inside are there 2 hopping to the centre? On a previous post the inside cricket was hopping in a different direction." You're absolutely right, Vicki! Each cricket on the lining is hopping in a different direction! That, of course, means that I had to make at least one cricket facing each direction. That was planned. All of the outer most flaps of the skirt and jacket have the flowers/hopping crickets on their lining. The interiors of the the under flaps have the labels/flowers.

Parting Shot: Necklace in Progress. I got the supplies today for making the jewelry. For as simple as this jewelry is, it was very hard to make a decision as to what to make! I had many, many choices of beads and findings and I spent a good two hours just looking at all of it until I made a decision. Now that I know what I'm doing, I should be able to finish it up tonight.