Daywear Jacket Style Question

[Bugbear]

Well... For what it's worth, I have continued to work on the jacket, since I cut it back to the hem allowances. Too late to turn back now.

I have sewn down the parts of the folds on the back that had been pinned down. This created the new side seam, for lack of a better term, and they are about three inches long, I think. I also closed the back vent and pressed the seam allowances for that, as well as the creaces of the pleat on either side that makes the back flap. The hem across the back flap is lightly pressed in, also.

There is plenty more sewing to do on those pleats, but having the creaces there will help me. I put a stitch at the bottom of each creace to hold it there. I'm kind of using ideas from the kilts here, and I will be adding a stabilizer across that back part that I sewed down to make the new side seams. This will attach to the pocket structures to continue the stabilizer on around to the front, .

I did not press the darts above the new side seams yet. However, I pinned on the pocket flaps that will extend the pockets as a kind of cuff. I could get my hand in the pocket just fine, so that worked out. Still not sure about adding the middle button and buttonhole.

I just like working on the jackets I guess.

[Bugbear]

This evening, I took out some stitching I had put in at the bottom edge of the pleats on the back of the jacket. These stitches were to hold the front and back of the pleats, making up the back flap, together as a single piece. I was not satisfied with the stitches, so put a single stitch through the inner crease's edge and all the fabric. I want to redo some of the other stitching back there. The back flap's hem is slightly lower than the rest of the jacket so that it will never be shorter than the hem line. Keeping in mind that the pleats are there to take the place of the open vents and the fabric panels behind them.

On the three inch fell, between the darts on top and the pleats below, I put in lines of steeking on the inside part of the pleat; there's a line at the top and at the bottom of the fell. The stabilizer will attach to the area between these lines of steeking; going across the small of the back, attaching to the center seam allowances, so the tension will be in the stabilizer rather than the stitching etc.

I'm putting off working on the front of the jacket, that would be the cutaway, because I haven't decided what to do on the buttons yet. I don't know if the middle buttonhole will work out. I will probably be doing something that will require the button holes to be re-stitched, but reproducing that keyhole shape might not be doable for me. Still think it would look better, though.

I hope this isn't all a waste of time.

[Bugbear]

This time around, I sewed the backside of the pocket lining back on; it was sewn to the pocket with the same stitching as the pocket flaps. This closed the back, top-inside of the pocket off, then I sewed the flap, which is now turned upside down, to the front edge of the slit pocket. When I stitch the sides of the flaps to the jacket, these will make necks or cuffs for the pockets.

Before I did any of that, I pressed the back flap's corners to see if it would help the issue I was having with my stitching there. It did, and it looks good to me now. There's still more work to do on that back flap though.

I also got out my first kilt jacket conversion, the corduroy, and compared the fronts face to face. The curved cutaways are going to be in just about the same place, so I'm not going to worry about that anymore.

I like the fit of this new conversion more than the corduroy, but the cord has a different character... more rugged and thick, so I would leave it as it is. Also, I think the pleating approach has a lot of potintial with jackets that are too large around the waist, but fit the chest and shoulders. The corduroy jacket had a slim waist to begin with, so it workd out all right.

Not sure how this will look in the end, but since it was all ready started, I might as well finnish it. Guess I'm really not in any hurry; everything's up in the air with all of this, anyway.

* I guess this thread is dead, but as a final note... I did not like the way the pocket cuffs looked, so removed them, turned them back around and sewed them on as the flaps that they were intended to be. They are two inches above the pocket slits, but the pockets are still fairly good sized. I'm just going to leave it as a two button jacket, not that it matters. Guess that's the end of it. *

[Bugbear]

Well, since this thread has bubbled up to the surface...

I plann on redoing the curved cutaway a bit; they aren't quite as smooth of a curve as I would like.
I raised those sewn down areas in the back, at the top of the vent pleats, up a few inches. They are now sewn down between the shoulder blades and just below the top of the kilt. The darts at the top are smaller and the jacket fets even better at the waist line.

I have looked into ways to do this on the corduroy jacket but with a more tapered pleat that will not need to have the three inch sewn down area.

I have also been looking into ways to refine the seam on the experimental jacket so that it is much more like the regular seam that has been sewn from the inside. As it is now, it is sewn down with small invisible hem stitches a bit like on a kilt fell.

When I work these things out, I can apply them to the formal jacket I am planning to convert to a kilt jacket.