Vogue 2734 - Anna Sui brown corduroy jacket

Remember this OOP pattern? Back in April I sent out a request to purchase it from one of my faithful readers. I got some great responses, including a notification that it was currently for sale on Etsy.com. Except I didn't check my comments to the post for several hours, in which time it was purchased. (No doubt by someone reading my blog. How mean!) Anyway, a very sweet lady contacted me through patternreview.com to let me know she had it and was willing to mail it to me. For free!!! So a big thank you to Stephaney Thomas, aka mrs quickly. You rock!

I love this design! It has really interesting design lines and is like a jigsaw puzzle to piece together. I cut the pieces out singly to ensure they all were on grain. The sleeve caps have a fair amount of poof to them which balances out the bottom flare from the peplum. (I also made this little white top back in January. It is proving to be a much worn garment.)

Here at the side you can see the fun cut of the sleeve. This jacket has a ton of topstitching, another element I adore.

The pattern pieces for the peplum were actually much more flared, but I didn't think that would look very nice in the thick corduroy I chose. A total of 7" was removed from the bottom hemline. I also had to go up a whole size in the waist, as the pattern is very tiny in that area.

I have to show you this buttoned up on my dressform because it currently doesn't close on my body. However, I'm not even sure it will get worn this way - looks a bit Little House on the Prairie to me.


Okay, I've got to tell you that this was not fun to make. I wanted it to be a casual garment, so decided not to bother with a lining and finished the exposed seams with bias tape. Lots and lots of bias tape. Which alright, that gets pretty monotonous after awhile. But keep in mind this corduroy was thick. That makes trimming it with bias tape harder. And remember all that topstitching I mentioned earlier? I'm kind of a perfectionist and wanted my topstitching right along the edge of my inside bias tape. Since I was not having fun, I didn't want to work on it much in the evenings. That's why this project dragged on for 3 weeks.

I spent one whole evening trying to get the bottom hem sewn down. There was so much ease to work in that I just couldn't make it look neat. I got frustrated and went to bed. The next evening I figured it out. I sewed a gathering stitch close to the edge, steaming it in place along the jacket seamlines, and ran another strip of bias tape along the bottom which was also topstitched down. It worked beautifully!

The sleeves were the perfect length without a hem in place, so I cut a facing and stitched a scant 1/4" seam to attach it. It was too small an opening to sew with my machine, so I whipstitched it down. The construction seams on the sleeves were finished with a zigzag stitch instead of bias tape since they will never be seen.

Oh, and this is my jacket for October.

Baby Rachel is now 7 weeks old and is tipping the scale at 10 pounds. She's such a tiny little thing that I regularly get comments about having a brand new baby. Here she is fresh from the bath, channeling Richard Simmons. Isn't that curly hair a riot? Once it gets brushed it totally flattens out.