Ziggi - A day's worth of muslins...

So I spent today making muslins for my planned Ziggi jacket. Yes, muslins plural, and I'm not done yet. I kinda think I would have been better off just drafting myself my own jacket, I wouldn't have been much worse off given what you actually get when you buy the Ziggi pattern, it's not like the instructions are anything worth paying for.

First up, let's recap... I have some gorgeous aubergine wool suiting that I want to make into a biker style jacket, and from limited selection of options, I settled on the Style Arc Ziggi pattern.

Now, the style arc patterns are single sized, so you can print only one size at a time.

My bust and waist come in between the 10 and 12, and hips between 12 and 14. For this reason I chose the size 12. Interestingly, my "upper arm girth" places me in the size 8, but my "shoulder breadth" just above a size 14. When you buy the pdf pattern you get three sizes, so I bought the size 10-12-14 bundle of patterns.

Above is the muslin of the size 12, straight out of the envelope.

Starting with the good; I really like how the collar is sitting. And despite the size chart suggesting that the sleeves would be too big I like the width of the sleeves.

And onto the bad issues...

The pooling at the back is somewhat expected based on my body shape, and I didn't worry about that straight away, working on the principle of starting at the top and working down with fitting... the most obvious issue was the armholes. The armholes came very far down, impeding my arm movement an awful lot.

It bunched up as shown above when I moved my arms around at all. My first thought was raising the armscye, but I noted that the bust felt a little more comfortable when the jacket was bunched up around my shoulders like that, so I tried removing some vertical length from between my armpits and shoulders...

Pinning out the excess did seem to help, and achieved the goal of having free use of my arms (a somewhat important thing don't you think?)

I did some partial unpicking and slashed and overlapped all the pieces and stitched them down to check out this alteration a bit more (see above pics), and thought it was promising enough to transfer to my pattern pieces. As this alteration had reduced the overall length of the jacket, I added the length back in at the waist to make the jacket the length I wanted it.

And so my second muslin...



While the principle of my alterations were good, there are obviously still quite a few problems...

Two changes I could easily make to this muslin were that I had added the length too high in the back, and now the seamline of the back peplum piece is sitting too low, so I shortened the upper back pieces and lengthened the peplum to move this seamline up. I also added half an inch of width to the bottom of the peplum while I was redrafting it, to give the jacket a little more ease over my behind....

(Yes, that's my "I've spent a whole day on this muslin and it still looks terrible" face).

So, at the end of a day of muslining I still have a heap of problems, for which I'm thinking the following changes for muslin number three:

- Add a little more length back in where I removed it between the armpits and shoulders to hopefully alleviate some of the pull lines from the armpits
- Take the width of the shoulders in by about 1.5 at the top, tapering to nothing by the lower sleeve piece (note my comment earlier about being worried about making a size too small for my "shoulder breadth" - what a load of tosh that measurement is! It's too big in the shoulders, not too small!)
- Do a sway back adjustment to remove some of the pooling at the small of my back
- Do a small FBA through the middle of my "middle front piece", to add some more ease and shaping through the bust
- Possibly add a little waist shaping through the side seams.

What do you think? Would you make those changes based on the above photos? If not, what changes would you make?

...and if I do eventually manage to get a good fit, I then need to work out how to make equivalent changes to the lining pieces.

Which reminds me of another frustration with this pattern; the pattern notes that the lining is optional, however you have to print all the pieces, there's no option for printing just the shell and/or lining pieces. This is frustrating me right now in particular as I'd quite like to reprint just my outer pieces, but to do so I'll have to reprint the whole thing. The lining and shell pieces are completely mixed together on the pattern sheets, so it's not even like I could just print some of the sheets to print the shell pieces again. I'm very disappointed by this.

Jacket Pattern Decisions

An enormous thank you to everyone that suggested jacket patterns after I asked for suggestions the other day. In case anybody else was interested I thought that I would share the options that I've collated, and infact, writing out this post has helped me make my decisions.


The Blazer

Three main patterns came out as suggestions for the blazer; McCalls 6172, Simplicity 2446 and Vogue 8333.

 

M6172 was suggested by Gail, who has made an inspiring version of this pattern recently. This pattern certainly ticks all the basic boxes, but I think I'd prefer something a little more curvy

V8333, is a Claire Shaeffer Custom Couture Collection pattern, and apparently has instructions for both RTW and couture construction techniques. I really like the sound of the instructions of this pattern, I think I want welt pockets as opposed to the in seam pockets in this jacket, and also think I prefer 2 buttons over 3.

 

And the pattern I think I'm going to use is the S2446. It is one of the amazing fit patterns that has different pieces for different cup sizes, which I have heard good things about and will hopefully make it easier to fit. It has two buttons and lovely angled welt pockets. Unless I discover another pattern, I think S2446 is my girl. (So if anybody hears about an Australian sale on simplicity patterns please let me know)


The Biker Style

For the second jacket, with regards to recommendations one pattern was mentioned over and over and over; the Style Arc Ziggi. However, the price tag of the Ziggi has made me do a bit of searching to see if there were any other options around, which found me the Kwiksew 3764 and the Burdastyle Larissa.

The KwikSew 3764 has the colar and zip style that I'm after, but I'm not sure if it's the styling on the envelope or how the pattern really is, but it looks really boxy. I think a jacket as boxy as that would be pretty unflattering on me.

 

Similarly, the Burdastyle Larissa is also fairly boxy, and also pretty cropped, I am planning to make an upper hip length jacket so it can be worn with jeans etc as well as waisted garments.

And so that brings me back to the Style Arc Ziggi. There was obviously a reason that most people suggested it. The princess seams in the pattern will add shape (or provide the opportunity to at least), and it looks like it's already upper hip length. I've been informed that the instructions leave quite a bit to be desired, but there is a sew along out there for the jacket which should help with the construction. I guess I'll be digging deep into my pockets and going with this pattern.

Jacket plans - can you help?

I would like to make at least one jacket this year. I have two pieces of fabric I want to use, and a vague idea of what the jackets will look like, but not much more than that yet.

It might seem a little early to be thinking about jackets (particularly given that it got up to 37C in Melbourne today), but the fabric I have isn't that thick so I figure these would both make great autumn jackets and I want to be able to take my time.

One of the jackets I want to make is a normal blazer style and I have some dark green wool for it:



The second jacket I want to make I have some aubergine coloured wool for, and am envisioning a biker style jacket with an asymmetrical zip:



However, I don't have any patterns lined up for either of these jackets, so I thought I would put it out there; do you have any recommendations for patterns for either of these styles?