Saturday 10 November 2012

McCall's 6441 Progress

In a previous post I mentioned that I had cut out the McCall's 6441 Palmer Pletsch jacket pattern but didn't have time to start sewing it.

When I went to the sewing expo with Sigrid and Clare back in September, we all purchased some lovely fabrics and I went for this pretty lime green wool and cashmere blend.  This is a great colour and goes so well with chocolate brown, navy blue, black and I guess you could even wear it with white. Those of you who are experts in colour, will no doubt see other possibilities too.

Can you see the fabric peeking through the neck edge of the jacket.  This is some more of that lovely spandex mix knit that I made some other tops from, see here and here.  At the moment I am thinking of another cowl-neck top again, but this time with long sleeves.




The sleeves have zippers inserted at the cuff, however because the seam where these sit are underneath, I am not too sure of the positioning because it isn't that visible, however it still good experience because I haven't inserted zippers in a sleeve before.

If you are anything like me, you probably hold your breath when inserting the sleeve into the armcye.  A tip I picked up on a sewing course I went on was to use the inside of a tie (which is cut on the bias) and stitch it to the sleeve head, stretching as you go.  The bias causes it to shrink.  Sadly it didn't shrink quite enough so I had to still had to sew two row of stitches which I then used to gather up the ease.  Next I pinned in the the sleeve smoothing out the gathers to avoid any pleats of puckers as these would show up on a plain fabric.

This is probably as far as I shall get tonight, and I will need to make an early start if I want to sew tomorrow as we are babysitting our beautiful GD tomorrow, but so far this is a fairly easy pattern to put together.

Adjustments: The nice thing about these patterns is they have kindly marked the cutting lines for sway back, and full bust adjustments etc.  I cut a size 12 and after doing a tissue fit, I found I needed to add an inch to the bust, adjust for my sway back and I added a little to the upper arm of the sleeve (clearly my biceps are larger than the pattern allows for).

Notions required are:- 18" zipper for the front and 2 x 7" zippers for the sleeves.  1/2" shoulder pads and the usual thread and interfacing.

Stop by tomorrow, fingers crossed this jacket will be finished.

Catch you later.........................




14 comments:

  1. Your jacket is looking good, nice pattern. There have been some posts on PR recently about using tie interfacing for sleeve heads. Have fun with your GD!

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    1. I have missed those PR posts, but I just buy the ties because you can make bias binding from the silk and use the inside for the sleeve heads and I can normally pick them up for 50p or £1.00

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  2. Love the green fabric and I think your jacket is going to look great.

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  3. Beautiful fabric... Eeeeeh 3 zippers, this is a challenging jacket..It will be so pretty when you
    finish it.. I love that it goes with so many colors.. Great choice.. Happy sewing.

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    1. I am thinking of putting in two more zippers if I can

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  4. Great job so far on the jacket. Love the zippers and may have to do this jacket again with the zippers in the sleeves.
    Ron Collins has us use Tailor's Pride and you can see how to do it here: http://everythingsewing.blogspot.ca/2011/11/setting-in-sleeves.html Hope this helps you out.

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  5. Ann thanks for the link and for taking the time to put together your tutorial. I haven't heard of Tailor's Pride, and as normal we probably can't get it in the UK. Your jacket that you made looked lovely.

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  6. Nice pattern and I know the fabric is even more beautiful in real life. The zipper detail is lovely.

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  7. Lovely fabric. Those sleeve zips look really good. Didn't know the PP patterns had swayback adjustments. That is such a help for so many.

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  8. Looking good. Peggy Sgers sells the tie interfacing for exactly this purpose Pauline. A meter is $9.99 and goes a long way.

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  9. Beautiful fabric in a great color (colour!) You make so many lovely garments; thank you so much for sharing your progress with us all. And now you're up to FIVE zippers for this project, wow!

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  10. Scrummy fabric! I may well have to go and pick up some charity shop ties to give your sleeve head method a go on the Otto jacket I'm making. Great progress.

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