Yay! White Jacket is done. Actually, it’s been done for over a week but I wanted to take it to the cleaners for one last press and to clean some of the grub that’d occurred while handling and sewing.

And you know what? The dang cleaners pressed a different roll line. What’s up with that? When I picked it up, the lapels were flipping up and folded onto themselves inside the cleaner bag.

And the lapels were so perfectly rolled before the cleaners. Hmph. Hopefully I’ll be able press some of this out when I get a chance. After my last post, I ended up taking apart the entire lapel and shaving off some of the extra allowance from the facing. It was work to do all that, but I quite enjoyed it, like a little science experiment in deconstruction. I could see how the lapel wasn’t lying parallel with the collar. Shaving some off solved both the dimpled and ripple-y lapel (but the cleaners somehow managed to press even more ripples).

Okay, so lesson learned about the cleaners. Has anyone else had their tailoring undone by a cleaner?

The chain was one last detail I needed to make it more like my original inspiration. (More jacket details in my last post.)

If I were to make this pattern again, I would do one more adjustment in the bust area, something like this:

Actually, I think that should’ve been my first adjustment, and I’m figuring I will have to do it in most patterns with a lapel. I cut and overlapped almost two inches in the Lady Grey coat. I have broad shoulders but am rather tiny around the rib cage and bust, so having things very fitted-looking there is important to me. I’d also narrow the lapels even more than I did. Fat lapels come in and out of fashion but at the moment I much prefer the long and narrow lapel. Other than all these refinements, for anyone still balking at Marfy, I have to say I really liked working with the pattern. It was drafted well, made a great block to start from, and the lack of directions freed me to follow the sew-along.

In other news, we hit our first 100° (38C) day yesterday. This pool hides in an apartment courtyard near us and some of our friends sneak in at night. We were taking photos at a nearby park and then D said, that dress really wants to be near a pool. I almost jumped in. Seriously. I’ll still have use for light coats from this point on, mostly to wear indoors as Texans love their air conditioning. Movie theaters are infamously refrigerator cold.

I really want to give a big thanks to Sherry for all her amazing work in the RTW Tailoring Sew-along. She’s added a huge, invaluable resource to online sewers–and in my humble opinion probably deserves to get paid for all her teaching work and commitment in answering our questions!

My next project will be a few simple tank tops, as I mentioned before. I’ve already got a silk one cut out, and am fixing up another pattern for knits, based on the Lydia.