Happy New Year

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First I want to wish you a blessed and safe new year.  I prayed the Lord's blessings upon your life.

My sewing goal for this past year 2015 was to start this blog to encourage myself to sew once a week.  Not only did I start 6 months late but I never even came close to sewing once a week - it was more like once a quarter.

My new goal this year is to be a bit more realistic.  I am going for sewing at least one clothing item a month, enter at least one sewing contest, and attend at least one sewing class (either live or virtual).  I always do craft related sewing so there is no point in setting a goal for crafts.

This month I truly stretched myself - I entered Pattern Review's "New To Me Pattern Co. Contest".  As I suspected I would do I stressed myself out really bad and almost did not complete the pattern.

How I Did It

The pattern I used was Pearl & Opal from The Sewing Workshop.  I chose to sew the Opal jacket.

I immediately starting slicing and dicing the pattern because I thought I needed to lengthen the pattern 3 inches.  What's funny is I am short and normally have to shorten patterns and I never cut into my patterns - I use the pivot and slide method from Nancy Zieman.

After I made the adjustments I realized it was way too long so I got discourage and put the project down and did not pick it back up again until about a week or so ago.  I wasn't ready to admit defeat so I did a quick muslin to see how it would fit without any adjustments and to my surprise it fit rather well.  I ultimately added inches to the hips and shortened the sleeve length.  I should have also shortened the back length some.

Each day this week after work I have gone home and worked on my Opal jacket.  I used Madiera Decora 1592 (sunset) and 1478 (tangerine) for the serged edges and Sulky Blendable 12 wt 4066 for top stitching.  I did a reversible 3 thread narrow serged edge.

 Initially I wanted to add extensive embellishment to the fabric (after it was completed) but change my mind after seeing the effects of the Madiera Decora thread on the edges - it was absolutely beautiful (imho).  The tangerine color was on the bottom edge of the jacket and around the collar.  When you fold the collar down it exposes the sunset color so I edged the sleeves also with the sunset color.

The fabric I chose was called Crossroads Denim and I ordered it from nancysnotions website.  The color is called "sweet potato" and the fabric color is truly that of a sweet potato.  I wanted to use a fabric that was a little heavier since the jacket is unlined.

The pattern instructions were really easy to follow and the jacket goes together rather quickly.  I love the cut of the jacket in the front and the back and I love how it looks on me.  I will definitely be making additional jackets from this pattern.












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