Vogue 1642, Part One

I fell in love with Vogue 1642 the minute I saw it. It had that casual but stylish vibe that I am constantly searching for lately. Active wear just isn't my thing unless I am being active. My  current lifestyle is such that I want really nice casual in really nice fabrics, but still casual. After taking class with Claire Shaeffer and making a couple of Chanel inspired pieces I was always on the lookout for more wool boucle. I found the above at Fabric Place Basement a few years back and eventually decided I loved it but did not want to make a Chanel jacket with it. I wanted something more sweatery and cozy. The pullover top on Vogue 1642 fit that bill. While the fabric gives off a bit of a commercial carpet vibe in the pic it is really soft and cozy and should work perfectly for this project. Here's my plan. 

I am going after a soft, slouchy  sweatery look.  The pattern description is "very loose fitting" and I had to keep that in mind as I made my muslin. There is a lot of ease here, 43 inches for the size small bust but it seems to all work out. 

I definitely wanted a Bemberg rayon lining and this is the best color I could find. This fabric will never show and will be used to underline the garment. I will use Hong Kong seams  and a Nancy Zieman lining method that I love for the sleeves. The facings of that big neckline, which will show, will be a lighter weight rayon ponte in black, the better to not have the wool be scratchy on my neck. I hope to treat the hems with wiggan. I want to go all out on technique with this to do justice the price tag of that boucle. This also meant that a muslin was critical. 

This is the start of my muslin making with the hem loosely tucked up and just laying on the dress form to make a point. I found the markings on this pattern a bit confusing. In a couple areas the dots, and there are a variety being used, were glommed together with very close seamlines and it was not easy to distinguish exactly where they went. I did my best but in the end found that if I just marked my seam lines on the muslin with a mechanical pencil I could more accurately match up the seams. You can see how nothing matched with the dots so maybe I cut the pattern wrong, which wouldn't surprise me as I did find it difficult to distinguish what went where. This also made me realize that any marking on the real garment will be with thread tracing and tailor's tacks. Do you see this heading in the "epic" direction here? I did get things to match perfectly with my pencil method. 

 Making the neckline had me reading the directions several times over but it all fell into place. Do you see the problem with the above? There are lots of bias edges here and I just sewed away on my underlay. When I pressed it I realized it really looked cockeyed and you can see how it stretched out in the above pic after being sewn. Because the fit is critical amongs the pieces on the collar it's important to remeasure against the pattern pieces as you go along and before stitching those seamlines. I recut where necessary to bring it back into line. 

 I found the width the zipper is sewn from the seamline in the collar is critical to getting the inset to fit perfectly into the bodice so watch that.  

Here the collar unit is just layed on top of the bodice for you to see what's happening, not sewn in yet. I made a decision, not in the pattern, to make my collar more slouchy, not the upright version you see here. This will be a matter of light interfacing and facing and a lighter zipper.

I have a long, thin neck and narrow shoulders and just thought it would look better on me. I also just like that softer collar look with the boucle  fabric. I think I am going to veer from the pattern with the collar installation and not sew the faced unit in as one piece. Instead I will leave the facing free and treat the edges differently, probably a Hong Kong seam. We'll see. 

The sleeves on this pattern are raglan and darted at the shoulder. They are way too long for me and really the only adjustment I needed to do size wise, that is, other than my "always" petiting of the pattern. I had to make sure I "petited" the whole neck unit as I did the bodice so it would all match up. Almost forgot! 

I am using a size 3 zip metallic nylon coil zip, love those, in rose gold for the neck unit which I got on Etsy. I thought the size 5 zip would be too chunky and might interfere witht he slouchyness of the collar. Above is a size three zip but most jacket zips are five. 

I made one pocket on the muslin but will have two as the pattern specs. They will be scaled down a tad for "petite-ness" as I always do. 

I am a down and dirty half hour muslin maker, but not on this one. I wanted to work out every detail, not just the size so made the design up pretty much exactly as spec'd. It was a great lesson and now I am confident and ready to go on the "good stuff".  I can't remember when I've made a muslin all detailed out like this one but it was the right thing for this project. Usually my muslin making simply involves checking fit issues but I wanted to make sure fit, scale and skills were all in order before putting shears to boucle. Stay tuned...........Bunny