More fitting and sleeves for the jacket

 I tried the jacket on after I had sewn it together. I was not happy with the fit. I had once again done the mistake of making things too big. As a large woman I'm used to clothes being too tight, and I really wanted this jacket to be big. The problem is that when you add too much fabric and make it too many sizes too big, well it looks bad and I felt really downhearted about it all. It was obvious that the problem was with the back.

This was the integrated pleat in the back. It was hardly visible, because there was so much fabric around it. So I turned it into a folded pleat, like the side pleats.

It was a bit fiddly, but the process was the same as on the side pleats. Cut a straight cut into the bodice and fold the excess fabric in under it.

This was the finished pleat in the back. I also took in several cm on the back seam to make the whole back pieces smaller. That is a reason why I always have a back seam, instead of a one piece back, it is always a lot easier to make adjustments with an extra seam.

So then it was on to the sleeves. And I could only realize that I didn't have nearly enough left of the pink fabric.

That is one sleeve cut out in the black fabric, and the total amount of pink fabric that I had left. Since the pink version is supposed to be a lower class garment I didn't mind piecing together, that would actually bring some character to the jacket. The black version is going to be more of a middle class garment, possible lower upper class, so to make that look better I decided to keep the pink fabric at the bottom of the sleeves. That meant that even if the pink was visible when wearing the black side out, it would look like the whole sleeve was just one piece of pink fabric.

I filled out the upper part of the sleeves with orange wool flannel. The piecing is done in a mix of machine and handstitching. A good thing with using the wool flannel at the top is that it's thinner and lighter than the pink wool, so it was easier to ease it into the armscye, without getting too much bulk.

Since the jacket is going to be reversible I had to attach both layers of the sleeve, without any raw or ugly edges. I did that buy sewing the black sleeve to both layers of the bodice, and then I placed the folded edge of the orange/pink sleeve over the seamline and prickstitched it in place. At this moment I realized that the orange fabric had become a bit larger than the black, but I decided to live with the sleeve on that side not looking quite as good as the black one.

With that I had finished the main part of the jacket, now it's the closure and hemming left.