65: #Gingham along jacket construction continued

I have already posted my gingham items in my last post

64 and 65 #Gingham along items

but for anyone interested this is a bit more on the construction of them.

This is the back frill. Sides now sewn up as the pattern says.

You can just see the gingham pocket lining here :

 No idea why but I decide to twin needle stitch the frill but did single row stitching for all the rest of the topstitching. Slight mistake there!

 The collar has a pleated faux leather frill which was quite difficult to stitch since the layers were a bit thick for my machine.

These are the sleeve frills. The pattern says to pleat the middle bit as shown and then to gather the rest into the cuff but the faux leather was just too thick and refused to gather at all so I ended up having to pleat the rest into the cuff as well.

 

  I had loads of problems with the leather straps. They are all slightly diffrent to each other. I could not get them to look even and in the end decided to live with them as they are because when wearing they move around anyway so will never be perfect and really I already unpicked them twice and its not good to do this with leather/faux leather so no they are not quite right.

The back strap has two small vintage silver rose shaped buttons which came from my long dead Great Aunts. 

I lined up the top stitching on the back of the sleeve with the top stitching on the side back panels. The first one is not quite perfect but the second one was dead on. Again I decided to live with this. 

And this is my final outfit:

I can see me wearing this alot but maybe not for work!

All in all the gingham along sewing has been very enjoyable and I would do it again. It caused me to seriously stretch myself rather than just making the same old safe but wearable stuff I usually make. It also made me think about how to use this piece of gingham I had obviously liked when I bought it but could not see myself in most gingham clothing. Making it a bit more Goth/punk really made me want to wear this. I found several things about this pattern I would change if I made it again, which I may do or maybe the View A rather than this one which was view B,  the most obvious change would be to add a lining because this is an unlined jacket. I could also do with learning how to grade a pattern down because this fits accross the shoulders perfectly but really is a little big round the waist.  And its the most difficult thing I have sewn in at least 20 years so was a real challenge!

Thanks for reading

Bracken