burdajacket

I’ve started work on my Burda jacket and it’s gone really well so far.  I cut it one size smaller and did a FBA on my muslin which turned out to be the perfect thing to do.  It fit great across my back and once the FBA was done, things were good on the front too. 

I found a lovely navy blue lightweight cotton twill which will be the outer fabric and then I’m lining it with a really cool poly print I found at JoAnn–actually they have a lot of really cool poly prints right now…if I liked polyester more, I’d buy a lot more perhaps, but in general I’m not a fan.

jacketfabric

There is all this shirring in the waist area in the jacket.  I don’t like the idea of the raw elastic being on the inside of the jacket–methinks it just looks a bit messy.  To solve this, I did opt to line the jacket.  My dilemma with lining it is two-fold.  I can’t cut the lining pieces from the same pattern as the jacket because of all of the shirring…so I can only partially line the jacket (defeats the purpose for me), shirr the lining too (too bulky), or treat the lining and jacket as one fabric, thus shirring them together (I like smooth linings).  I’ve also never worked on a jacket before, so to think about lining the whole thing  is a bit much too.

Here’s what I came up with.  I made all of the shirred pieces (fronts and back) exactly as they would be in the finished garment in my muslin.  I had to do some math to figure out how to distribute the elastic across the fronts and the back.  I did this because I’m going to pull the thing apart and use the shirred pieces as my pattern pieces for the lining, hoping that they will fit the outer fabric once it is shirred itself.  I’m not sure if this is going to work, but it just makes the most sense to me.

jacketmuslin

Other people on Patternreview have lined this jacket but none to my knowledge has written about their process in lining it, presumably because they’ve all lined like a million jackets.  Monique of Peacock Chic made a fantastic version (her jacket inspired my own hunt for this copy of Burda in the first place) and wrote a lot of helpful hints for the various parts of the jacket, but she did a Hong Kong finish instead of a lining.  I’ll try a Hong Kong finish sometime–but on a project with fewer and shorter seams.

I ordered some interfacing, so sometime next week I’ll be able to start the jacket for real.  I’m excited.  I think I’m going to love it.  I love it already in muslin–(it’s Nathan’s opinion that the muslin would make a nice bathrobe, but I’m not too convinced what with the overwhelming smell of the Ghost of Dryer Sheets Past coming off of this material) it’s very feminine and pretty. 

In other thoughts, you dear readers have asking me about fit and how to and so forth.  I consider myself no expert by any means, but if I can throw a few bits of wisdom out there for the benefit of others, I’d like to try.  So keep looking for some fitting advice here very soon.