Black stretch cotton jacket: Burda 08-2006-108

Hi, I am Lucia, I am a fabricholic. I buy and I buy fabric and I never sew anything. Here is to changing that!

It was looking a little desperate there for a while, after I made my pledge to sew with a plan and then proceeded to sew everything but. Fortunately I've come back to the straight and narrow and I'm actually making some progress now! Here is the very first item from my swap list fully completed:

Black stretch cotton jacket, Burda 08-2006-108

This is the second jacket I have ever made, and it shows. My first one was my Colonel Mustard Michael Kors raincoat, and I thought all my problems were due to the waterproof fabric which was devoid of any stretch and thus extremely unforgiving. This second jacket is made in a stretch cotton and it sewed beautifully until I got to the sleeves. For the life of me I couldn't get the sleeves properly set in! Three times I had to rip stitches off and in the end I just stopped because I wasn't actually improving anymore, argh!! 

There are no tucks on the sleeves, but they "ripple" as if there were. Reading in the sewing blogosphere I think my problem may be related to lacking padding in the sleeve head. This article by Melanie from Seamstress: Poppykettle is probably what I needed to have done... but if I am honest, once I finish a garment I cannot muster the strength to go back and fix or change something. 

Now reading the reviews in Pattern Review (why do I always do this AFTER I finish sewing???) it appears this pattern has way too much ease in the sleeve head. This review is particularly useful. Phew! So for next time, I'll just use the sleeves and armhole from a TNT pattern (once I have that...)

The rest of the jacket is fine, although the curved corners at front top and bottom are far from perfect and asymmetric... 

I do absolutely loooove the stretch charmeuse lining. It is soooo comfortable and luxurious!

I made this jacket originally because I needed something to go over my Burda color blocking dress. It does go but it's not quite perfect... The best I can figure is that the jacket is a little too long for my pear shape. My favorite jackets all sit ±7cm higher than this one. So that is one more lesson learned. 

Burda 08-2006-108 jacket and Burda 02-2012-117 dress

I also wrote a review of this pattern in Pattern Review.

All in all, I am still quite happy with this jacket and I think I'll get a fair amount of use of out it. As for my swap: one of six done, and this one was the hardest. Woohoo!