The White Velvet Jacket - Part Nine

Finishing and Just About Done!

I'm sure you'd like to see it done first, so here it is, and then I'll show you the hems and other finishing:

It still needs two things: a good pressing/steaming (especially the sleeves!) and a little bit of bead work. The beading I'll do tomorrow and the pressing before I wear it to church on Sunday.

Overall, I'm happy with the jacket, although I think there are some things that could be improved, like the lower back - which I thought would hang better in the actual fabrics versus the muslin. I should have taken more out in the waist, but was afraid I was over-analyzing and over-thinking the fit. I'm not patient enough with fitting - I was happy to get the shoulders right, and didnt' pay enough attention to the lower back! I will probably remove the hems and go back and fix that. Every garment is a learning experience and this one is no exception.

I sort of lost interest in the jacket for a while and I'm not sure why. Two days ago, I picked it up and really started working on it. I needed to do the hems before setting in the lining, so I first turned up the hems to see if I'd need to ease them in since they are curved. Instead of basting and drawing up the thread and steaming to ease in the excess, I decided to slash and overlap the fabric for a flatter finish. I could have made darts, too, like I did with American Beauty's hem, but with the velvet it would have been too thick. Once the hem was slashed about 1" and overlapped, I hand stitched the overlaps together:

To finish the velvet for hemming, I bound it in white nylon tulle. Silk organza would have been appropriate, too, but the tulle was easier to get to than the organza. I then catch stitched the hem to the underlining only:

I suppose part of the reason I didn't want to work on it was because I wasn't happy with the collar and the lining insertion. In the end I decided to fell stitch the lining in completely by hand. Since I was working with two slippery fabrics, this was ideal and probably saved me time in the end. Here's the jacket with the lining pinned in, and below it, a section of the fell stitching and prick stitching.

I ended up doing a lot of hand stitching on this jacket. It was actually more than I had planned, but I don't mind hand stitching.

Tomorrow I will introduce another art garment project, Forget Me Knot. Stay tuned!

Q/A: After yesterday's post about my daughter's jacket, Emily wanted to know "Did you make your daughter's skirt too? It's really adorable also." Thank you Emily! Yes, I did make the skirt, too and posted about it here. It is from Simplicity4891 , which is OOP.

Parting Shot: 200 pieces later, we have an airplane. For his birthday, my son received a lot of model kits, Legos and other activities to keep him busy. Here he is, working on a Lego airplane. He does pretty well with the instructions and only needs a little help from Mom.