Sewing by the sea and HSM #3

Last weekend I spent in heaven. That is, at Schloss Noer near Eckernförde, with 33 other sewers (and mostly bloggers), invited by Alex of MamaMachtSachen. From thursday to sunday afternoon, time galore for sewing and talking and sewing and taking a stroll to the sea and sewing and sewing and sewing. It was great! And made me aware of how good it is to get out of the closet and share and communicate. And how very important it is to me to have enough time for sewing. After this I made a plan: I will reserve one evening each week for sewing, make an appointment with myself, time to look forward to, and don’t end up on the sofa instead, no matter what. I do hope this will work, although I’m afraid, tinkering all by myself won’t be the same after all.

My original plan for this weekend and this month’s HSM challenge had been to sew a coat. The challenge is called:

Protection – make something to protect yourself (from weather or injury) or your clothes (from soiling etc.)

Several coats were sewn at Noer and it definitely would have been a good idea for me to tackle such a project with so many helpful and experienced sewers around. Buying fabric still isn’t done though, so I decided, protection from the chill of a summer’s evening is protection allright. And sewed a suit jacket.

The fabric came mostly from my Sunday Best Dress, which I made about a year ago. The skirt was easy to narrow, but the blouse was really big, due to breastfeeding and generally recent childbirth. So I took it apart, and together with the remnants of the fabric I had enough to make something new from it.

The pattern I used was this:

It is, obviously, for a dress, but I bought it because of the tuxedo collar, with the intention of using only the upper part. It was a size larger anyway, so I just assembled it as it was – and it worked and fits quite well. I forgot to make the facing of the collar a bit smaller than the upper part, so I had to tack it down around the neck to keep it from rolling up. The only other issue was, that, although I had already lengthened it, the finished jacket still seemed to be too short. I added a strip all around the hem, which looked fine at the back, but the lower ends of the turned back collar weren’t convincing at all. At home again, I came up with this idea to make the thing look more intentional:

So in the end I’m very happy with this! It passes very well for an early 20s jacket, is nice to wear and fills an actual gap in my wardrobe.

The Challenge: Protection

Material: viscose crepe, rayon for lining

Pattern: reproduction of an original pattern from the early 1920s

Year: ca. 1923

Notions: thread

How historically accurate is it? The fabric is not, I think, the rest is fine – so: about 90%

Hours to complete: about seven oder eight hours

First worn: not yet

Apart from the jacket I made two blouses at the sewing weekend, both of remnant pieces of fabric, from a dress and a pyjama respectively. One after my basic long-sleeved pattern, with a sash and a buckle:

And another one after the One Hour Dress-scheme:

Rich booty! And a wonderful weekend to feed on!

More reports on Sewing by the sea: here.