Two Generations Shopping for Fabric

Although I thought about shopping in New York for my fabric, I realized it wouldn’t happen soon enough. We were in New York two weeks ago for a family BBQ in Queens, which meant there was no time for a side trip to Manhattan. I head for my favorite independent fabric store, Sarah’s Fabrics in Takoma Park. My daughter and I managed to get to the fabric store 30 minutes before closing. Can you select fabric for a dress and two Chanel-type jackets in 30 minutes? YES! She even picked out a piece for a skirt. We know what we like. We walk up and down the aisles and when we see it. BAM!


I saw the fabric for my dress, or what became the skirt of my dress once I put the pale taupe charmeuse and the black charmeuse next to it. Quick conference with my daughter and the pale taupe charmeuse became my bodice, the black charmeuse became the midriff, and the “dotted” chiffon became the skirt. While those fabrics were being cut, we searched for the fabrics for our jackets. My daughter doesn’t like the boucles; the texture is too much for her. What else can I use, she asks. Wool plaids are good. There on the bottom shelf, a purple and black houndstooth plaid. Purple is one of her favorite colors. She can’t be persuaded to consider anything else. She’s done. I spot my fabric as we head for the cutting table. It’s too much for my daughter; her eyes roll toward the ceiling.


Behind the cutting table are the silk charmeuse fabrics. Do you want a purple lining for your jacket, I asked my daughter. NO! That is just too much for her. Black silk charmeuse for her. For me, only the bright yellow-green silk crepe de chine will do.
Behind the front counter are trims. I tell Sarah’s husband I need a trim suitable for a Chanel jacket. He has not an idea what I want, but Sarah does and points him to the section of trims. I select the purple trim for my daughter. NO! She wants the subdued black trim. I sandwich the purple between the black trim. NO! One row of black trim. I chuckle. There’s a yellow-green trim that I am not sure about, but it looks okay because it picks up one of the colors in the fabric. I think about putting black ribbon trim under it and I buy it just in case I don’t find something I like better.


There are buttons galore. I decide to save the button decisions for another day. Generational shopping is fun, but draining. Thirty minutes is enough. We end the shopping trip with two tall frappuccinos and chocolate covered grahams.

Still waiting...

I finished my muslin fitting garment and am amped and ready to get started on my jacket. Unfortunately my fabric has still not arrived! I am going to give it until Wednesday before I call to find out what is going on with it. I hope it gets here soon!

Everyone else jackets look great thus far! Congrats to you all!

Coat progress report

Dear readers,

I have a confession to make: I made a wrong fabric choice for the Chanel coat!

First of all, it turned out the wool I had wasn't wool at all, but some synthetic fabric, which almost melted under my iron. Oops! I've had that fabric in my stash for few years. I remember it was really cheap (no wonder!) when I bought it, and there were few remnant pieces of fabric - one piece of 1.60m x 1.40m, and another one of 0.80m x 1.40m.

The second thing - I tested the quilting stitches on the fabric only after cutting it, and the stitches didn't blend into the shell fabric, but remained clearly visible. I tried quilting by hand, and it worked well, but I am not a patient person, and my coat would probably end up as an UFO. Hence, I decided to pass over the quilting, and try to make something out of my cheap-wanna-be-wool fabric (even though it's a cheap synthetic, it really is a gorgeous fabric).

Since there were no quilting, I decided to interface all the pieces, to give the coat some stability and stiffness. I used medium weight interfacing.



The silk I used for lining frays A LOT! I had to finish the seam allowances with a zig zack stitch. Also, some of the silk threads ended up in my nose and throat, causing cough and sneezing.

Here's a sleeveless version of the coat. Note that lining is just hanging under the shell, it is not sewed to it yet.



The patch pockets are sewn by hand to the shell of the coat.

I added the sleeves in the meanwhile, so here's the picture.



I really like how it looks!

Here's what's left to do:
1. press the sleeves
2. apply shoulder pads
3. attach the lining/facing to the coat
4. sew the trim band
5. sew the frogs

Hopefully, I'll finish those during the following week.

Time for handstitching...

The quilting is finished, and today I was able to stitch the body of the jacket together. I left the sleeves off to check the fit (it's perfect), trimmed the seam allowances down to 3/4" and pressed them open. I smoothed the lining down and will be fell-stitching the lining closed to conceal the boucle seams. I abhor hand-stitching (this project is teaching me PATIENCE), but will find a good movie and take advantage of the quiet house tonight (now that the kids have gone to bed)!
Hope all of you are finding success with these new challenges!

Adapted muslin

The general opinion in the comments both here and on my own blog was (like I thought) that I could have started with size 12 in the shoulder/neck part. Based on a comment on my blog, I first tried to change the muslin I already had instead of sewing a complete new muslin. Below the new pictures, again only the right side of the jacket is changed.

I'm wearing a thin lambswool top underneath, and think I won't wear anything with more thickness under this jacket. It feels a bit snug, but like Lindsay T said, this is meant to be a snug fitted jacket. Am I ready to cut in the real fabric?

On the right is the new adapted version. For comparison I have put the pictures side by side.

Jacket muslin

I've decided on the classic Vogue pattern 7975, view B (short length, long sleeves, no overlapping center front). So it's time to make a muslin.

I started with a size 14. On the pattern a final bust circumference of 105 cm is indicated, what I thought would be enough ease (8 cm). By size chart I would need 16, with a final measurement of 110 cm.

In the pictures the left side of the jacket (my left side) is the original size 14. I have taken space out of the upper half of the princess seam both in the front and in the back, because of too much space in the shoulder area and back. Think it should be a bit more, but the shoulder width seems ok now. I used a small shoulderpad, simply need that with my sloping shoulders.

What do you think? When I put the muslin on I thought it was OK, but seeing the pictures I'm thinking I should cut a size 12 for the upper part and do an FBA.

For time reasons I will not be sewing this one in the classic Chanel way. As I read in previous posts here that you need 100-200 hours for that I was discouraged to do that, as I want this one to be ready three weeks from now. Though I still can't see needing more than 100 hours when you machine quilt the pieces. But I might be mistaken in that, having no experience with this

(This fabric gets wrinkles when you only look at it!)

Chanel or bust

Hello! I'm new here...and to blogger, so I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Jane S from Baltimore and Naples, FL. Yes, I'm a snowbird, one of the luckiest people on the planet. I love sewing, hate typing, love reading...so I'm mostly a lurker on many people's blogs and sewing sites. When I saw this sew along via Sigrid's blog I was very intigued. I've taken the stich and flip class on Patternreview from Shannon Gifford and made a quick faux Chanel jacket. I was considering the longer Susan Khalje guided version. One challenge for me is that I have fairly severe scoliosis and my right shoulder is extremely lower than my already sloping left shoulder. So I truly need shoulder pads. The jacket in this picture has removable shoulder pads. But it does have that wonderful sweater like feel since I quilted it as well as followed the stitch and flip technique. So I'm eager to join this sew along. I don't have too many local sewing friends who want to tackle a project like this so I appreciate the internet for getting us all together. And I'll probably get more computer and camera/picture savvy as a side benefit.