Halston shacket progress....Jumping in

I went ahead and made a quick and dirty muslin, and I'm SO GLAD I did.

 

I wasn't far into the process before issues started popping up. First up, the sleeves had way too much ease in the sleeve cap. It might be fine for a leisure suit jacket (some shoulder pads would be in order to fill out the "puffiness"), but I'm wanting this to fit like a shirt. Sorry, no puffy shirts for me. The ease was especially dreadful from the shoulder seam down the back. Eeek! I calculated that there was 1 1/2" of ease in the sleeve cap, so I removed all but 1/4" of it.

 

 

Here you see the pattern adjustment and the excess fabric that will be cut away. The sleeves are so much easier to set without all that "pulling up a thread" mishegas, not to mention that it just looks better.

 

My next problem was with the side seams. The guys at Studio 54 must have been very trim, because there is a large amount of waist suppression to this pattern. There was no way this old man could ever button it up. I don't even think Spanx for men would help.

 

I reduced the curve of the side seams and the back seams. This provided an extra 2" of wearing ease. Although this picture makes the adjustment look perfectly straight, there's still a very slight curve.

 

Surprisingly, I didn't have to do a sloped shoulder adjustment.

 

This is my TNT shirt pattern laid over the Halston pattern. The shoulder slopes are just about identical. It was nice to dodge that bullet!

I shortened the sleeves by 1 3/4". I also played around with the collar, and decided that the original 70's version was actually the best.

 

Having made all the pattern adjustments it was time to cut this bad boy out. Cutting out any plaid garment is a time consuming process, but it can also be intensely satisfying. I relied heavily on the expertise of Suni over at a Fashionable Stitch for this project. I have such huge respect for this woman. Her talent is off the charts, and she was responsible for a large number of people finding my blog back when I was working my way through the Japanese coats.

 

If you're smitten with plaid this fall, be sure to check out the Plaid Chonicles

 

 

Next time I'll have some actual progress to show!

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