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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Toddler Jacket - McCall's M5697 (view B)

Hi!

  I'm been organizing... My sewing room was in real need of some help. It took me several weekends of sorting, purging and organizing to get it in a reasonable state. I'm not done yet but the room is so much more usable and I don't have to clean up anything to start a sewing project. In the process, I learned a few things like... I honestly thought I didn't have a lot of fabric until I went to organize my fabric. It became very clear that I had too much sitting around and not being used. Surprisingly, I have way more fleece than I thought. We all know how bulky fleece can be. So, I'm on a mission to get rid of the fleece by sewing up whatever I can. Well, I'm not interested in making blankets out of the fleeced but just about anything else will probably work. Got any ideas for fleece sewing projects? Leave me a comment. I would love to hear your ideas. Well... I've had this cute little jacket pattern, McCall's 5697, which I had bought to use with some cute corduroy fabric.

Well, instead I got out some grey fleece and went to work. I decided to do View B, with the elbow length and ruffle sleeves. The jacket is unlined. I found the instructions easy to follow. Since I used fleece fabric I wasn't concerned about finishing the edges, as fleece will not unravel and cause a messy hem. I do like finished seam and I'd like to try a french seam on my next attempt. I think I might try View D (long sleeves with button tabs). The fleece might be too bulky but for the thin corduroy fabric I have, a french seam might work. For the most part, I followed the directions. I did add a small black braided trim to the collar, sleeve hem, and pockets. I used approximately 65" of braid for a size 3T jacket. If you're going to buy trim for this jacket, I would just get 2 yards to ensure you have enough trim.


When I did the edge stitching, I did increase my Design Diamond stitch width to 4.5 because of the thick fleece. The longer stitch length seem to allow for a more defined edge stitch, meaning the stitch did not get lost in the fleece. Also, the jacket calls for 1 1/4" hem but I only did a 1" inch hem by simply folding up the bottom jacket edge. There just didn't seem a need to turn the hem under and tuck it in the hem allowance since I was using fleece. The only part I was not completely happy with was the lack of fullness in the sleeve ruffle. I'm not sure if the pattern was not sufficient to have a more substantial ruffle or if it is the fleece the inhibits the ruffle. If I were to make the fleece ruffled sleeve again, I think I would add more fabric to increase the ruffle. In general, I would recommend this pattern because it was fairly easy to put together, cute and there a lots of ways to make this jacket unique by adding trims/embellishments.



Credo,
Lisa

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