Read part one on this jacket here Fearless Cardigan Jacket part one

Read part two, welt pocket instructions - here Welt Pockets

Darts sewn in back shoulder – because of thickness of fabric, I slashed the darts open as far as possible and then pressed them that way.

This jacket has a center back seam that has shaping at the waist and then gently curves out at the hips. Because I am straight through the hips, I trimmed off some of the curving in the last 6” of this seam. This was sewn, then the allowances pressed to the left, with the under one being trimmed to half. This is a mock flat fell seam, it is then top-stitched on the outside 3/8” from the seam line.

Next the shoulder seams were sewn and pressed open. At this point, it is easiest to sew on the front and back facings while the jacket is open (i.e. side seams are not sewn yet). So I sewed the front facings to the back neck facing. Because of the thickness of the wool melton, I did not interface these pieces, but I will put interfacing behind each buttonhole for stability. This will be done later before the lining is attached.

Then the side piece was sewn to the back. A try on at this point showed too much shaping for my hips, and I undid the seam, taking in the back piece about 5/8” at the bottom and tapering back to the original seam line about 5” above the bottom. These seams were then pressed open.

Now it is time for the sleeves. Because I had altered the front seams, this made the armhole smaller so I measured the finished armhole on the seam line and compared this with the seam line of the sleeve cap. The sleeve cap, unaltered, is about 1 ½” larger than the armscye which should work fine in wool. In another fabric, this might be too much and prove difficult to ease in, but wool is very malleable and 1 ½” ease should be okay here. So I sewed up the seams in the sleeve and undersleeve and pressed them open. When you have a two-piece sleeve like this, you can see how much nicer it is than a one piece sleeve that will have no arm shaping. The two piece sleeve already looks like an arm slightly bent. In a tailored jacket, they are a must.

There are several ways to ease in a sleeve. Because of the thickness of this wool melton, I decided the best method would be two rows of longer stitches, so that I could pull them up and ease in the sleeve. Sometimes I will do this with only one row, but that wouldn’t hold here, the thread would break. And easing the sleeve cap onto a strip of bias interfacing wouldn’t work as well either, because I don’t think I could pull the bias enough to make it work. So two rows of basting stitches, one on the seam line itself and another at ½” from the raw edge around the entire sleeve cap. Usually there are notches on sleeve caps, but Cecelia didn’t put any on her pattern, so I basted from where I thought notches should be.

Two rows of basting machine sewn around the sleeve cap

Then I pulled up on the basting and the sleeve drew up so nicely. If you have never worked with wool, you are in for a very pleasant surprise; it eases and works in so nicely in places like this, unlike any other fabric. This is because wool is very malleable and you can push and pull it around. It works with you, not against you.

The sleeve cap is forming nicely with just minimal pulling on the basting stitches

I pulled up the basting and worked the ease around the sleeve cap. I did this until I got a nice shape; then I worked around the cap finding any spots where there was tightness. This is indicated by dimples in the sleeve – when you find those, you need to loosen the stitches in that location until the fabric is released.

Then I pinned the sleeves into the jacket and hand basted them in place so that I could try it on. I did this with a double thread because this wool is heavy and single thread might break. I found that there was more ease in the front of the sleeve than in the back, so it will require more work to fit this in nicely. You can see this from the next photo where there are dimples in the front sleeves, but not the back. I also found that the top of the sleeve didn’t want to sit right at the shoulder seam of the jacket but it sat better about ½” toward the back of the jacket. I don’t fight this, I think it indicates where I have made some alterations and the sleeve will show you where it wants to hang to some degree.

These dimples show me that I need to adjust the ease in this area until the dimple disappears. Don’t be content with a pucker free sleeve. You also want one that has none of these tell-tale dimples. A little work with your finger nails here will make those disappear. It is just a matter of redistributing the ease.

The back sleeve appears fine – no dimpling here and no puckers. Check as well that the seam on the back of the sleeve is the same distance from the princess seam on the jacket on both sides of the jacket. This is something that I learned from Anneke; both sides must look exactly the same, so you need to measure how far those seams are apart, because the human eye will pick up that something is slightly off if you don’t. Now you are probably going to be checking out the back of jackets from now on, believe me I do all the time. This is particularly distracting in church where you have so many jackets in front of you to inspect!

I also noticed that the sleeves collapse at the top of the arm, so I am going to add sleeve headers to the seamline.

Sleeve headers have been added to the sleeve caps

1/2'” shoulder pads made of needlepunch - easy to remove a layer if you find these too thick. They can also be trimmed if they are too big and come over too close to the neckline. This type of pad has a snip to mark the shoulder line, so there is a right and a left pad.

Side view of the shoulder pad – five layers of needlepunch in graded layers

I place the pad so that the larger part is on the front of the shoulder. I need more padding in the front shoulder area than the back, I think this is true of most women.

Shoulder pad is stitched into jacket and sleeve header is added

Shoulder pad is stitched all along the armscye seam allowances - this keeps those seam allowances facing out into the sleeve. It is done in two parts, one half first, then the pad is re-pinned from the outside and the second half is stab stitched. Stitches are not tight, this allows the pad to nestle in there nicely and not pull on the outside of the jacket.

Stay tuned, the next article will deal with sewing the lining and inserting it.