Sewing the Steffi Jacket: Final Touches

As promised, pictures of my progress with the Steffi. 

Basting the lining and jacket together in preparation of sewing the facing on.

Completed basting ready and waiting for the facing.

Facing sewn on and sleeves hemmed.  This is when I started to realize I was almost finished.  And I still needed to go buy buttons.

I under stitched the facing's seam allowance.  It gave the edge of the jacket a nice finished look to it, and it made the front of the jacket and the facing lay a lot nicer when i steam ironed it.  I am defiantly doing this more in the future.  (You can see that I hadn't taken out the basting stitch yet in this pic.)

In the end I did decide to finish the facings edge with bias binding, and it just so happened that I had some vintage bias binding in navy.  (Side note: I need new fabric scissors.)

The Bias binding took a big chunk of time to complete, but the final look was worth it.

Bias binding attached and hand sewn to the lining.

Here's a close up of the finished edge.

Yesterday I also practiced button holes on my sewing machine the top three were my last attempts and my best.  I'm still nervous about the button holes, but I am ready and know exactly what I'm doing. 

Yesterday I braved the wind and the rain to buy these little buggers.  BUTTONS! I finally went out and bought buttons for this jacket.  I ended up buying fabric and there was tons of new stuff in the shop that I wanted to get.

There is one more day to my self imposed deadline to finish this jacket and I think I'm going to make it.  All I have to do today is make six button holes and sew 6 buttons.  And then voila, a jacket.

Sewing the Steffi Jacket: Sleeves and Silk

It's a river of silk!  I am making head way.  The past few days has felt like a struggle to sew, but I pushed threw it and now I am on to the lining.  The lining pieces are cut out and are waiting for me to only change the color of the thread in my machine. 

The jacket its self is hanging neatly on a hanger look very dapper and waiting for it's lining.  I might hem the sleeves before I start the lining.  I am really proud of how the sleeves turned out.  It took an hour to set them in and I wasn't sewing them by hand.  It was like complicated sleeve surgery where everything had to line up just so.  The one good thing is that after struggling with the first sleeve the second was a breeze to complete. 

The fact that this garment is coming together so nicely is getting me pumped.  The challenge of sewing this jacket has kept me on my toes and made me have to learn new skills.  As scary as it first was I am glad I took this project on. 

Here is one more pic of the sleeve, I am really excited about them.

Sewing the Steffi Jacket: Making Head Way

So, I got over myself and started sewing the jacket together.  I'm almost done with the actual jacket part and am hoping to start on the lining by the end of the week.  Above you can see one of the sleeves.  I figured out why the one sleeve on my muslin was all cockeyed.  I didn't line up the sleeve seams in the right way therefore the sleeve wasn't set into the jacket correctly.  Well that is why I sewed a muslin first.  I've made good markings on my sleeves and body of the jacket so that won't happen again. 

Here's the body all sewn up and ready to go, Now I just have to sew the collar to the body and the facing, and set in the sleeves.  This is where my fear started to come up again.  My big question was how do I put the lining in? My question was answered by Gertie on her blog.   She made a coat in 2010 and video blogged about it every step of the way.  It gives great information on tailoring and the vlog about inserting the lining calmed my fears and made me realized that my first instinct to make both the jacket and the lining separately was correct.  The coat vlog laid out how to attach it and hem it and all the important things I needed to know.  I feel confident moving ahead in my Steffi sewing.  I think I will make my deadline too.  How exciting.