Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Floral 80s Blazer

I love this blazer.  Absolutely love it.  Gaudy? Yes.  80s? Yes.  Look like I'm 75 and going to a business meeting in Honolulu?  Maybe.  And Gary has reminded me frequently of these facts.  But I don't care, I love it!

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)