Marfy 2248

This is the practice run for the Marfy 2248 jacket/cardigan. The fabric is wool or wool mix tweed heavy suiting, or maybe light coating. Its quite a loose weave and as I made it up I realised that had I gone with my initial plan of making this fabric into a tailored jacket, I would have been tearing my hair out within minutes since it was very easily pulled off grain due to the loose weave and would have been a nightmare to shape properly. I serged this one together, and that was where my first mistake was. My lack of forethought/spatial awareness, meant I ended up with a serged seam that showed on the collar when it was worn, necessitating a fix involving a strip of fabric and a bit of hand sewing.

I made bias bands from cotton quilting fabric and used these as little mini facings on the armholes but must have pulled a little tight when I applied them and made my armhole inadvertently smaller (not by much though, and its perfectly wearable even over a very bulky sweater). I don't think the cotton fabric was the best choice for the purpose.

The frayed edging took hours and hours to do. Much longer than the rest of the jacket to be honest. I cut one and a half inch strips of fabric (mostly using the selvage edge) and folded them in half. Then I laid them flush with the edge of the fabric and pinned them in place. I'd left the seam allowances on the edges of the jacket so this gave me three layers of fabric to fringe. The strips were sewn on a quarter inch from the folded edge of the trim using a very, very narrow zigzag stitch, quite closely set together so the trim couldn't fray back too far. Once it was all attached, I had to pull the threads out to leave the fringe. I will admit that this had some appeal; there is something quite addictive about pulling threads out of things. It did take a long time though.

And here is the Mohair version. Now this one really does work. At least I think so. The mohair didn't work for the belt and it didn't look quite right with the patch pockets on it either. I think it really wanted in seam pockets, but of course I didn't realise this until too late. So its got a purple leather belt to close it and no pockets at all.

The mohair is very lightweight but it has enough body to puff up wonderfully in the collar pleats. I can set this collar right up at the back of my head and it stays there, all puffed up and lovely. The fabric is super warm but as I mentioned in passing in my previous post about the jacket, the mohair strands get absolutely everywhere.

Its finished entirely by hand along the hem and collar edges, but the front edges were cut on the selvage so I didn't have to do a finish treatment. The collar attachment seam is underneath the collar this time and I cut with a one inch seam allowance there to give me plenty of fabric to turn over itself to enclose the raw edges. After a bit of procrastination (well, actually three days of procrastination) I finally laid the pattern out and found that the pattern match was the simplest I have ever done. My side seams sort of match, and my fronts match across. I was really pleased.

I absolutely love this cardigan/jacket. What else can I say?