Katherine Brenne Jacket

What? A completely new pattern? Not the Tessuti Mandy again? Whatever has gotten into me?

— Well, a few years ago I found this jacket on Pinterest and really loved it.

Initially I was too chicken to try and wing a copy, but then, — great excitement –, Vogue published V9135, a Katherine Brenne pattern that was very similar. Yes, it has taken me years and a pandemic to actually get around to making it, but better late than never.

The pattern is less extreme in body width (note the width where the sleeve joins the body) and the collar is more restrained too, which is all to the good. These days I still like oversized, but much less that in my Lagenlook heyday. That particular insanity has passed.

Having stepped out of my TNT comfort zone I made a muslin first, which got the tick for shape, although the fabric I had used was a pink country print which was a bit off putting.

Confined to the house because of the dreaded lurgy, I thought I would have another go with more suitable fabric. I would have preferred plain black, but the black and silver acetate was all I had in my stash. Problematic with other prints worn underneath, I know, but with this epidemic said to go on for months I will have enough jackets to go with absolutely everything. The only problem will be that none of them will fit me before long, due to my current enormous consumption of chocolate. The Easter bunny has a lot to answer for.

So here is the jacket, unfortunately proof that large prints are much more aesthetically pleasing than small ones, but hey, this print is not too bad and it will be a long time before I can rush off to a European fabric market to get a better one.

You can tell that I am not into shoes!

After I had finished this jacket, and wished very much that it was plain black, I decided to have a go at dying my original pink muslin. I thought that the print would still be visible, only tone in tone black, but happily this isn’t the case. Even a very close look can’t find any trace of it. So now I have a plain black jacket as well as the silver on black print. I suspect the plain will get a lot more wear.

Because black swallows all the light so you can’t see much in photos, I lightened them up quite a lot, which makes them look washed out and grainy, but at least you can make out the bones of the garment. The lightening does horrible things to human faces, so these photos are cropped to the essentials.

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The Tessuti Jac

Jackets need a lot of thought, as I have discovered. Not only does it have to look good and be comfortable, but it also needs to go with a lot of your outfits to make it useful. Plain, boring jackets do this best, but who wants plain and boring jackets? Unfortunately I have made quite a few exciting ones, only to discover that they are mostly wardrobe flowers because they only go with one monochrome outfit, which is boring once the fancy jacket is taken off. Or they don’t accommodate the top underneath very well, making the sleeve and shoulder area on my recent linen tops look crushed.

It doesn’t help that I like to wear my jackets open, because anything other than plain black, navy or grey will very likely clash with the top underneath. The cure for that, of course, is to make myself button up, so only the pants or skirt are visible. I wear a lot of black pants, like everyone else, so anything that can be closed and goes with black bottoms should go with a lot of outfits.

So here is my latest attempt at an interesting jacket that will actually get worn. I modified the Tessuti Jac Shirt for an unstructured, unlined specimen that is just the right weight for early autumn, when the temps are still in the mid to low twenties, but the mornings are cool.

As you can see, I took off the collar and only used the collar stand and I made long sleeves. The fabric used is a heavy furnishing cotton from Ikea. Details of the modifications can be found here.

Minimalist’

Lately I have developed a taste for minimalist art and it is influencing my sewing. Simple shapes, simple stencil motifs. I also try to repurpose when I can, and using sheets is my latest strategy. Either good parts of my worn out sheets, or sometimes ‘as is’ sheets from Ikea when I can find something suitable.

This outfit started life as a single size fitted sheet, 100% pure cotton. It was pink, not a colour I can do much with at the moment, but not to worry. I overdyed it in blue, expecting some sort of purple, but instead it came out as a nice denim blue. Perfect.

The pants are elasticised at the top and tapered towards the ankle. The original pattern was changed and adapted past all recognition, so I won’t bother to link to it. The top is once again the Tessuti Mandy tee, with the armscyes changed to accommodate a woven and the sleeves changed to cuffs. Instructions on how to do this are here.

I used this minimalist painting as a starting point for my stencil, turning it sideways and changed the aspect a little to suit the shape of the Mandy and changing the colours from high contrast black and white to low contrast blue and grey.

Perhaps the contrast is a little too low, I am thinking of maybe overprinting with a slightly lighter shade of grey. This will also make the print more even, right now it is a little blotchy. A lesson learnt that large areas of colour are probably best printed with a screen, even a stencil doesn’t do them well, at least not in one go.

I will add some updated pics once I have done the second print, but for now more of this first iteration.

I did do a slightly lighter version. To tell the truth, I was just busting to try overprinting, it’s a great thing to have up your sleeve if the first go isn’t so great. It will make me more prepared to take risks, and without taking risks and having failures you can’t truly master anything.

I’m happier with the lighter grey. The first try was too light and resulted in ragged edges, but I left it after tidying it up as much as possible with a brush. I like the quirkiness of having one motif in a different shade, and it is on the back, so won’t annoy me every time I look in the mirror.

Here is a pic still on my cutting table after printing. You can see that I just cover it with newspaper and it doubles as a printing station.