Scifi (v2)

New try. In couple of things...

First new try is in making pants/trousers, whatever you call them. I've tried twice before and failed both times. Third time is the charm, eh?

The second new try is in making a fitting scifi uniform style jacket. While my ME-jacket looks pretty ok, it has several flaws: first of all, no pockets! I don't know what I was thinking leaving those out. With the stupidly small pockets in all the girl fit jeans, it would be nice to have some jacket pockets to keep my keys and phone in... The other flaws are fit problems. There is enough space for the bust, but too much below. The jacket in general is somewhat too short, even though I did lengthen it. And the shoulder/sleeve fit is such that even driving a car is a bit difficult. :)

So what I want to do here is make pants and jacket, that fit. Design isn't from anything specific, just general scifi uniform look. I still have a little bit of the blue from ME-jacket and the blue dress left, so going to make some details (shoulders, pockets, knees) from it, the rest is going to be black, likely denim. Maybe add a bit of grey for accent, I do like the combination of blue, black and grey. :) Sketches. The asymmetric design is the main idea here.

Materials

I did find indigo dyed black stretch denim from Eurokangas. I thought indigo is blue, but according to my sister, if you dye it enough times it turns black. And when it fades it will fade to blue rather than brown, which sounds like a good thing since I am pairing the denim with darkish blue.

Third color after black and blue is grey, planning to make some corded piping myself using grey bias binding and some cord. Will have to see if it works out. :) I also have some black sheet fabric left from the SW potholders, going to use it for the insides of the pockets.

Patterns

I drew patterns for women's straight trousers from Joka tyypin kaavakirja. Unfortunately they don't fit me at all. Modifications in the book are only for making the seat or the leg longer or shorter, nothing about adjusting the shape of anything. Drawing the wedge my Levi's (Demi Curve) jeans shows a significant difference in the shape, with the Levi's fitting way better.

I loaned a couple of magazines from the library, Suuri Käsityö (4/2010) and Ottobre Design. SK's trouser patterns were the same as kaavakirja, so no luck there. On the positive side the issue has a nice jacket pattern which I am going to modify for my use. Ottobre's trouser pattern had a better fit, but they were way too tight for my liking. So in the end I ended up just drawing pattern for the trousers/jeans from my best fitting Levi's skinny bootcut jeans.

In the jacket pattern I changed a bit the line of the cut at the front to better fit pockets in the seam. It was pretty much straight vertical cut, I made it more curved, going towards the side. I also made the back pleats into cuts because I felt that it would work nicely for a denim jacket. Of course I also made cuts at the shoulders where mine will be blue.

Sewing etc

I started with sewing the back top pieces of the jeans to the rest of the back pieces. Then I did the inside seams of them and switched to the jacket. x)

With the jacket the first thing I did was the back, the cuts and the center seam. Next thing was the front side cuts and especially the pockets. I wanted the pockets to be hidden in the side cut seams as much as possible.

I had left some extra fabric besides seam allowances for the pockets. I first sew one side of a zipper to the front-side part right side down (see the picture), then I folded it and sewed another seam on the right side. This way the edge of the zipper will not catch on anything or fray.

Zipper front side down. Zipper folded and sewn on the front side.

After this I sewed a small seam on the front center piece along the edge of the pocket. Seam goes here...

Then it was time to sew the front center and the front side pieces together. After that seam was done, it was easy to get sew the other side of the zipper to just the right distance from the edge. Except that I decided to switch the zippers for "hidden" ones (piilovetoketju), so I switched them at this point. x)

Zipper all done, so next was the insides of the pockets. I used black sheet fabric because I think denim would have been too thick. I just sew it near the zipper with zigzag stitch and then around the edges with a straight stitch.

After the pockets were all done, it was time to make a decision: piping or no piping.

The grey seems to just give that extra detail this thing needs, so with piping it is. I made my own corded piping out of some grey bias binding (that I cut in half lengthwise) and some thin cord. As with the ME-jacket, I first sewed the piping to one piece (the blue) and sewed then sewed the two pieces together along that first seam. The other front piece was a bit difficult, thanks to the 90 degree angle... Ended up only sewing that corner from one side, leaving a bit on the bottom unsewn. The stitch on the blue will hold it together just fine.

June 2013: Change of plans (starting with the jacket)

I had this thing hibernating, because I just wasn't happy with how it looked. Took me quite a while to decide if and how I wanted to continue. What I decided was this: make it all black. I already got one blue/grey/black jacket, no need for another one. I did think about keeping the grey piping, but when I tried it out, it somehow did not fit, it stood out too much.

I kept the horizontal cuts, because that was how I had cut the bottom black parts already. What I did change was that the cuts now go all the way to the middle on both front pieces, no 90 degree angles to sew that way. I didn't like the seams going on top of the shoulders, so instead I cut these wedges for the shoulders. Sleeves are a bit improvised, with long cuffs. I hate sewing button holes, so I used snap fasteners instead.

I think the fit is generally a bit better than in the ME jacket. At least I got better motion for my arms and I got the length pretty much just right. The fit is actually a bit too loose for my liking, I am thinking of taking the sides in a bit. And I did just that. Sew a new side seam about 7mm from the old one. Also took the sleeves out and took same amount out from the sides at the top too. I like the fit better now. :)

Skirt

Since there was nice amount of the denim left after cutting the trouser pieces, I decided to make a skirt of the rest. Used "vekkihame" from Joka tyypin kaavakirja. Nothing fancy there I think, at least I don't remember cutting corners anywhere this time. :)

Trousers

These may be finished someday. Not soon though, not sure if ever. If I am going to continue, they'll be fully black like the other pieces of the set. :P

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