Jacket Prep Work

I 've made some progress with the Vogue 8692 jacket. I've made up my muslin and made changes to the pocket pattern pieces that were incorrectly printed. If you're interested the changes are up on Vogue Patterns' Facebook page.

Even if you're not interested in this pattern, you should still take a peak at their Facebook page. They share the work of bloggers like you and me and you'll see many familiar faces and their beautiful Vogue creations.

I just muslined the back, front and sides and tested for fit through my middle. It seems to fit okay!! Any comments?

The other big job was to prep the wool crepe fabric. I have 3.5 yards of 62 inch wide fabric, enough for the jacket and a skirt. The piece is way too big for me to be considering hand washing and flat drying, I'm just not equipped to deal with that. I could've taken it to the dry cleaners, but that will be expensive (I'd rather spend the cash on fabric). So I found another method on Carolyn's Blog Diary of a Sewing Fanatic, she calls it the "Steam the heck out of it" method. As she herself says, this is a REALLY time consuming method. I've been at it all day and haven't finished half yet. It involves using a damp press cloth and lots of steam and yes, pressing the crap out of it. I'm using a 20 by 12 inch piece of lightweight muslin press cloth and it covers the width of the fabric 3 times, but only 2 lengths of the press cloth fit on the ironing board, so I have to wait a while in between, because I can't move the wet fabric. So I don't know if you know what I'm getting at, kind of hard to explain, but it comes down to a LONG TIME. I've at least gotten to catch up on my PVRed shows while I stand there and press and I've been doing housework and blog reading and other stuff while I wait for the wool to dry a bit, before repositioning on the board and continuing the process.

Tonight Canada is playing Russia in the World Junior Hockey Championships Gold Medal Game, so I'm watching that while pressing and writing here while waiting. I'm really hoping to be done by tomorrow morning, as I absolutely have to tear myself away and go out to lunch with my husband. He's been home all week and has wanted to go out to lunch every day, but I've been so engrossed in my sewing that I've nixed the idea each time. So when I agreed to go tomorrow, he called some friends to join us, so I couldn't back out again. At least it's Indian food, which is my absolute favourite. I've been lucky all week, my husband has been around to deal with taking kids to school and back and I've been sewing or doing sewing related reading all week. ABSOLUTE BLISS!!! I think I need a bumper sticker for my car, "I'd rather be sewing!!" Can you get those? I'm happy, I'm on a roll, stay tuned for another update soon.