So far so good.

Pheeeew! The muslin for the Marcy Tilton jacket is finished and I'm happy to report that it seems okay for my pear shape. I know it looks terrible on the photo, but that is because the dummy is much smaller than me. On me the muslin looks fine.

It is indeed loose around the waist, but it does have shaping so it doesn't make me look like a solid cylinder. In fact, the curve of the hem from front to back helps my legs appear just a tad longer (and I'll take all the help I can get with that). A lot of the charm of this jacket is in the way it stands away from the body at the collar and hem. The muslin fabric is light and I didn't bother with facings, so it doesn't stand off the body as well as the examples on the pattern cover. The upholstery fabric I plan to use is much thicker and stiffer, so it should work better. So the lesson is: tops and jackets don't always have to be fitted, they just need to shape so as to define the waist.


I did think a while about the length of the jacket. Trinny and Susannah say that 3/4 jackets look okay on pears. Since I had no clue how long that is, I googled around a bit. All the examples I saw of 3/4 jackets have the hem of the jacket fall around wrist level (which also happens to be where my saddlebags are!). The Marcy Tilton jacket is 3/4 length at the sides and back, but a bit higher at the front.

I am ready to cut into the upholstery fabric. Since I would like for this jacket to be washable, I am going to preshrink the fabric. The upholstery fabric samples I'll be using are squares 68cm on each side. Let's see what happens...

The binge before the diet

Leave it to me to start "working through my stash" by (wait for it...) going fabric shopping!! Yup. The biggest fabric show of the fall (Stoffenspektakel) came this Sunday to my region and I had to be there. On the bright side, for the first time I did my homework in advance. I chose 3 patterns that I want to make and I brought them along to buy the fabric.

Nice, isn't it? In Vogue 2988 I especially like the stand-away collar of the jacket.

And no, it wasn't enough to only buy the necessary fabrics to make this wardrobe once. No, I had to buy two combinations... For the jacket I bought two fabrics: a nice double-sided oxford grey wool and a fancy red coating. Then, for the dress and skirt and pants I bought a wool blend in two coordinating houndstooth designs, 5-6m in total, AND a stretch wool in solid black and solid oxford grey, again 5-6m in total.

But no, this wasn't all...



The second pattern I brought along was V1117, a wrapped dress by Michael Kors.

But no worries, I didn't buy any additional fabric for this pattern, since I plan to use some of the extra fabric I bought for V2988 for this dress as well.

And finally, the last pattern I brought along was V8620, a wide-collared jacket from Marcy Tilton. For this jacket I felt so clever...

At a stand that was selling sample squares from upholstery fabrics, I bought 5 squares for €10! As you can see the squares match in color and texture but have very different patterns. There are polka dots, vertical lines, leaves, curlicues and flowers.

I am so excited by the prospect of combining these fabrics that I think I will begin my sewing with this pattern.