My-KEA Jacket

I now have a penchant for jackets with banded, puffy sleeves!

Take some daring print and colors...

...combine it with
Burda WOF, May 2008, pattern #123:



Technical drawing

....to get a "My-KEA" jacket. The moment I saw this fabric on IKEA's website, I wanted to purchase it immediately! It is bold, eyecatching, and looks attention getting! I enjoy making a fashion statement.

I really like the "hip" style of this jacket, but so what if does not exactly work with my figure type!

Happy Star Spangled Day!

From the review gallery, the fabric markings emphasized my figure in the wrong place, if you know what I mean, oops!

Although I sewed a jacket from an individual packaged Burda pattern a few months ago, I hereby officially call this my first Burda WOF jacket! I felt daring enough to venture out to "2 1/2 dotted" territory!

Pattern Description
"Short, sweet and stylish! This cropped blouson-jacket has short puffed sleeves and elegantly rounded lapels/revers on its unusual double-breasted front, with two buttons at the waist." Because do not have the model proportions of these Burda-ettes so I used two instead of four buttons.


Size
Sizes 36-42. I sewed a 42. I remembered this time to include the 5/8" seam allowances for each pattern piece (except at the armscye.....) and to cut out 3 rectangles (2 for the sleeve bands and the 1 for the casing at the bottom. I wanted to make sure I avoided such things as my collar and facing pieces coming out smaller due to forgetting the seam allowances!


Fabric used
Bold red/white home decorating fabric from IKEA. If you have been to IKEA recently, you most likely have seen it hanging somewhere throughout the store. The name of this fabric is "Fialena."


Likes
*The style of the slightly rounded collar and lapels.
*The puffed and banded sleeves which balances my figure
*The jacket's construction was not really that difficult. Omit the bottom casing and the jacket is simple to sew as a basic shirt or blouse.


Dislikes
*The elastic casing did not work with me as I had hoped for. The jacket would be roomy if I omit it.
*The sleeves felt slightly constricting due to riding higher on my shoulders than what I feel comfortable wearing. I wonder if this resulted from not adding the seam allowance to the armscyes of the front and back pattern piece. I prefer to wear sleeves with the sleeve heads situated to emphasize more shoulder breadth. By the looks of the technical drawing the sleeves seemed to be gravitating so much more inward than what appears on the dressform photo at the Burda website.


Directions
Surprisingly satisfactory! There are still some steps that could have been reworded for clarity. Maybe I have been acclimated to Burda's notorious curt and cryptic directions. I also made sure to include all the markings (asterisks and others) The steps for creating the triple casing for the elastic (two rows of topstitching the bottom band), attaching the collar, the front facing, and the back facing were sufficient for me to figure out, but would be big mystery if I lacked experience needed to make shirts and jackets.

Here's my list of experiences with what I call "Burdage Verbage" found in the patterns' directions.

* Burdage Verbage : "Cut elastic into 3 equal pieces and insert elastic into casing." Hmmmm.

There was no procedure mentioned on how do to this. I usually take a safety pin or my Dritz elastic threader to insert the elastic through the casing. After I passed my first strip of elastic through the first casing, I had a more difficult time with the next two strips due to the tightening of the casing (more so due to the nature of the fabric). I should have threaded the separate pieces of elastic through all casings simulaneously as I did in two or three of Heather's dresses to prevent the bunching. Oh well.

* Burdage verbage: "Pin facing right sides together with jacket. Build a little extra fullness into corners of lapels....".

My translation (or my wild guess!):
"Do what you can to prevent bunching at the corners."

From the technical sketch, I noticed that the collar edge and the lapels seemed fully disjoint. I carefully made a tiny clip at the corner and reinforced it with back stitching. The steps to face the lapels seemed fine ["stitch facing to hem edges, front edges and edges of lapels up the marking (corner)"] and I appreciated the fact I was told where to start and stop. The tricky part was to face section joining the elastic waistband. I looked at the outside and the inside just to make sure I was attaching the facing correctly at the front edge joining the casing of the elastic waistband. I encountered some tiny clipping at the corners and little positive ease due to the fabric. Also silly me, forgot to add a little more seam allowance to my front facings (which were cut from the extension of the front pattern piece) !


Creating and attaching the collar went smoother than what I had expected. The collar landed right in the middle of the front facings at the shoulder seams. I made sure that the facings remain above the upper collar before stitching.

* Burdage verbage: "Lay back facing up and stitch seam allowances together, close to collar joining seam."

I attached the back facing to the shoulder seams of the front facings and sewed it to the collar at the neckline (right sides together).


* Burdage verbage: "Lay facing down. Sew inside edge of facing to shoulder seams and hem band."

I turned the back facing in, tacking it along with the front facing to the shoulder seams and tacking the facing at the "hem band" (where it joins the elastic casing).


Modifications
*I stitched a sleeve band (right sides together) to the gathered bottom edge of a sleeve before sewing the sleeve seams. I trimmed off excess band length because I omitted what Burda calls the "underlap" for the button/buttonhole feature. Then I folded the band in half lengthwise to the inside so that I could slipstitch or topstitch the folded raw edge to the seam with the sleeve's edge. If I had included the "underlap" I would pivot from the seam of the sleeve and stitch the top of the band's excess then pivot to the sew the end seams.
*I used two pairs of large snaps instead of the two buttonholes
*I used two instead of four buttons. Somehow a combination of fabric, elastic waistband issues, and especially my hard to get rid of portion of my figure changed the front closure.


Conclusion
I definitely recommend this pattern if you like the cropped jacket look and would look great to wear over many of the cute dresses in this May 2008 issue. By the looks of my jacket, it would be ideal for the holidays and Valentine's day. Maybe I'll be daring and wear something blue underneath to celebrate the 4th of July! I probably will sew this again, omitting the elastic casing and lengthening it so that it is at or slightly below hip level. But overall, I had a pleasant instead of nerve racking experience with this jacket!