Friday Pattern Co, stop two.
This Arlo track jacket has been planned for a year, when I bought this fluffy Marc Jacobs fabric from The Fabric Store because I love it so very much, it has the best feel even on the inside. The amount of fluff means it would be pretty annoying on a pattern with a lot of small fiddly spots, but for this it worked out nicely.
The Arlo jacket has even been at the *top* of my sewing to-do list, but so little sewing happened so the list wasn't really moving. I wear zip front hoodie type things all the time, so I really should put more work into making my own and getting the quality of them up to my standards!
So the Ilford jacket felt small, even though it fit, and felt kind of useless, because that style is not really my thing.
The Arlo has a lot of size options. You can cut things at a short, medium or long length in the bodice and sleeves. By the size chart I'm an XS chest, S waist, and M hip. So I cut from XS chest to M at the bottom of the bodice piece, and then cut all the pocket level pieces as M. I used the short length for the body, and the middle length for the sleeves. I cut extra long pieces for the hem and the sleeve cuffs so I could use self fabric that doesn't really stretch much.
Other than green fluff getting everywhere, this was an easy sew. Oh, and except for how the fur got in the way and I couldn't actually see whether I was sewing the seam allowance. That meant I sometimes had to sew things twice, but it didn't impact the final garment - if anything my seam allowances were scant and the jacket should be slightly larger than expected. I didn't topstitch because the stitch lines would not have been visible and I didn't see the point.
The pockets are quite neat and it's easy to get a good finish on them. Everything came together really nicely.
However I had some deja vu once I tried this on. Again, it just...feels small. And that's before I mention the sleeves. Everyone who reviews this mentions the sleeves and I really should have taken that seriously! They are about 4" too short. like, the sleeves end at my wristbones. In the photos they somehow seem longer but I promise they aren't. And I used length "M" sleeves.
I have not decided whether to cut the sleeve cuffs off, add another sleeve piece, and put on new cuffs.
Another unexpected oddity - the pockets go all the way to the side seam, of course, which makes the jacket feel kind of wide in that spot. It doesn't bother me, but it's a thing I particularly noticed - maybe because this fabric is so bulky.
It's getting into spring and the tight coziness of this jacket isn't as desirable as it was in the depths of freezing winter. I just can't decide if it's actually too small. Maybe I should make all unisex patterns by the Friday Pattern Co in size M across the board...
It leaves me with a pretty lukewarm feeling about these patterns, though at least I have no issue with the instructions, which are clear and have nice diagrams.
Also, the A0 was quite rude, the sleeve occupied its own A0 page...that's a LOT of empty paper for one little tiny (and too short) sleeve.
No comments:
Post a Comment