Simplicity 1254 Progress (and zipper clarification)

I was finally able to order my fashion fabric (it's a royal purple wool from mood) so the motivation to sew up my muslin has finally arrived.

There's been some talk on PR about the zipper insertion on this pattern & since I'm working through it, I thought I'd take pictures as I went along. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm not done with my muslin, so at this point there's no proving that I'm doing this right :)  The instructions have you insert the right side of the zipper in step 2, while the left side of the zipper isn't put in until step 17. That's right. There are 15 steps between inserting the two sides of the zipper. Ahem.

Ok. So the pattern originally has 3 lines along the center front seam. These are the solid purple lines on my muslin (I added the blue dashed--more on that later). From left to right we have the Center Front marking, the "fold" marking, and the zipper stitching line.

The instructions read "Separate zipper. On OUTSIDE, pin zipper half with slider & pull tab face down on RIGHT front, placing teeth 1/2" from the fold line & top stop just below seam line at neck edge. Hand-baste along stitching line for zipper. Using an adjustable zipper foot, machine stitch zipper in place along basting. Remove basting. The remaining half will be applied later." (FIFTEEN steps later).

Okay then. I drew a dotted line 1/2" away from my fold line so I could see where to line up the zipper teeth. I also drew the zipper stitching line on the wrong side of my fabric (in addition to the right side). I started hand basting the zipper but that got old real quick & didn't seem to be helping much. So this is what it ended up looking like. You can see that my stitching line is right along my (crooked) basting stitches.

Now, my zipper foot placed my stitching closer to the zipper teeth than the pattern's "zipper stitching line" is. So I used my regular zipper foot & nudged my needle alllll the way to the left. If you look at the wrong side of my fabric, you can see that this put my stitching pretty darn close to where the pattern wanted it. The most "off" I got was 1/8". My stitching line (apparently I used purple in my bobbin thread--sorry) is to the left of the pattern's line.

 

This is what things looked like with the zipper flipped right side...right. I'm fairly certain that Simplicity could have just marked where to apply the zipper & have you stitch it regularly....but they might have been trying to keep this pattern "easy". In doing so, though, I'm afraid they may have over-complicated things.

 

 My initial thoughts on the fit  (without sleeves or the other half of the zipper...eye roll) is that I'll need a broad back alteration and I might actually have to take the hips IN. A first for me, that's for sure. 

Simplicity 1254--Plan B and some WIPs

I got the dreaded call from Mood that the fabric I had picked out for my coat was sold out & it's gone for good; not re-orderable. My heart is broken. But I'm on the prowl.

I reached out to Sunni (of A Fashionable Stitch) inquiring to see if her wool crepe is would be suitable for a coat & she very kindly offered to send me swatches. There's one that I really, really like, but it's better suited for maybe a lighter jacket or suit.

I've also ordered some swatches from Mood & I received some wool swatchSd from The Rain Shed, but they're Melton weight & I'm worried that the hood won't drape nice.

All that to say that I'm at a stand-still with the coat; I haven't even started sewing my muslin because (and this sounds over dramatic) I'm inspiration-less without a fashion fabric.

In the meantime, though, I'm in the process of stitching up 2 different tops. The first is the famous scarf collar top from Jalie (which I've sewn twice before) and the other is the my recent purchase Simplicity 1280. I got it mostly stitched up, though, and tried it on and the sleeves were a really poor fit. I compared it to the armsyce of the Jalie top & figured out that the back is too narrow. So I'm considering the first version a muslin & will stitch up a final version soon.  Sorry for the iPhone pictures :)

When I was cutting out the green one I kept thinking "This fabric is too crazy." But then when I put it on I really liked it. It's definitely not something I would even try on in RTW & I'm still not sure what I was thinking when I bought the fabric, but it sure has grown on me.