Remember back in November when I made a muslin for the Burda Armani knockoff coat and found it to be absolutely, unforgivably awful? Well, even at the time, I could see that my main problems with the coat weren’t necessarily likely to be problems with the shorter, jacket version of the same pattern (Burda 09/2010 #117).
So while I’ve been contemplating my Fall sewing options, going through my stash, and tidying up my tiny sewing room, I decided it was time to alter it to evaluate the jacket.
The main differences from the coat are:
- It has no collar
- It has extended sleeve bands instead of the awful dropped sleeves
- It’s cropped at the hips
Believe it or not, I still had the muslin tucked away from last year’s coat FAIL and I came across it again when I was tidying up my sewing room. In about 15 minutes I had adapted the earlier muslin to be the jacket – and most of that time was spent pressing 10 months of wrinkles out of it!
The front view kinda looks okay:
Keep in mind that I only made the arm band on one side, just because I’m lazy with muslins…
But it’s sticking out a lot in the back, and I think that sharp, horizontal hemline in the back doesn’t do me any favours.
Despite having the perfect fabric for this (bought from Elliott Berman in NYC), I’m not in love with this jacket – it’s just too big and boxy on me, even though I know that’s the look (it looks that way on the model, too). I don’t think the jacket is anywhere near as bad as the coat version was, but it’s still not good enough for me or the fabric.
But at least I answered my question, and cleared a bit of space from my sewing room and my mental sewing list! And hoo boy, have I got a list!!