Radical redesign

You may recall that I was mulling over the front of the last muslin, unsatisfied with it but also not seeing any solution.  Yesterday, a friend broke me loose from my assumptions by saying, “Do you have to use that collar?”

EUREKA!!!  Of course I don’t.  I had been thinking of it as non-negotiable, because the collar was the primary focus of the jacket, long ago and far away, when I planned to make it with a totally different fabric.  Now, of course, it’s secondary to the fabric, and in fact is a distraction from the fabric.

So I made some hasty sketches, and came up with this:

Now the fastener is on the left shoulder, and, freed from the collar, the line between light and dark can flow freely from the top of the garment.  The back remains the same, but with the direction of the diagonal reversed, so that the colors will match at the shoulder seam.

This garment has an Asian flavor – the fastener and line on the top is reminiscent of the chi pau (cheongsam).  But that’s OK – I think it’s a lovely line, and the chi pau is a totally elegant garment.

Now, of course, there’s the execution.  I go to see Sharon at 9:30 am tomorrow morning, so the muslin has to be drafted, printed, cut out, and sewn by then.  I had been worried about this – this is a radical redesign that changes virtually every seam in the garment, so I expected it would take a long time to draft.

Illustrator to the rescue!  It’s wonderful to be able to copy, paste, flip, and rotate with the click of a mouse.  It only took two hours to completely revamp the pattern.  I printed it out and cut out half the pieces last night; this morning I’ll finish cutting the pieces and sew them together.  Piece of cake.  I might even still make it to my class this afternoon, on sewing circuits into clothing!

Off to work on the muslin!  Not a moment to lose!