At the Japanese Friendship Garden in beautiful Balboa Park.
I've been a fan of blazers for a long while, particularly boyfriend blazers. I have a white one, but I don't wear it much as I'm afraid of getting it dirty. I ordered this fabric and I just thought it needed to be a blazer!
This fabric was a dream by the way. It's a "floral jacquard stretch suiting" from Fashion Fabrics Club. I think it's mostly polyester. It's fairly heavy, but not bulky. It doesn't wrinkle and it sews nice and presses nice. Just a dream to work with. The lining (not pictured) is orange acetate. I hate acetate, but the price is right. Not so nice to sew with, but slippery fabrics never are.
Sewing a blazer is hard. There, I said it. I used Simplicity 2340. I think the directions assumed that you had made a blazer before, and I haven't. It took a lot of puzzling, especially the collar. I redid the collar probably like 5 times. I was carefully matching the small dots and large dots as instructed, but on the wrong pattern pieces because there are a million large dots and small dots! I finally got that more or less figured out, but I never did figure out the back vent and I'm sure I did it incorrectly, but I don't really care, it works. However, if you have sewn a blazer before or have a reference book it's probably not so bad, and it wouldn't be so bad a second time around, if I were crazy enough to attempt it.
I'm not crazy about the fit either, which I think adds to the 80s-ness of it. According to my upper bust measurement I'm a 12, but I went down to a 10. I did a tissue fitting of the 10 and it was a bit snug, but I went ahead with it anyways. In my sewing class my teacher said that a garment will grow about a half inch when changing from tissue paper to fabric, so I didn't worry about the snugness. But this grew way more than a half inch. If I were to make this again, I'd go down another size.
One last thing- the button.
Gary hates the button, says it puts "the finishing touch on the granny look". I told him granny chic is in, but he never listens to me! Plus, this really is a granny button. When my grandpa's sister died at the ripe old age of 82, I ended up with a hot pink, faux fur, mod 60s style coat with these buttons. (No idea if it was from the 60s or just a replica. She was a good seamstress herself, I'm pretty sure she made the coat) I parted with the coat, but not before snagging the buttons. It only took me about 10 years to find a use for one of the five buttons, but at least they can finally see the light of day!
Mahalo for reading all about my crazy jacket and aloha! (and I mean that in the goodbye sense)
