Start of SWAP - Chanel

Instead of twiddling my thumbs and getting nothing done, I made a start on the first item of my SWAP 13 - the Chanel jacket. According to the rules, you can pre-sew one item before the start date and this is going to take A LOT of time!

Pattern is Claire Schaeffer Vogue 8804. Lots of couture techniques, hand sewing, steaming, shaping, basting, tacking and hardly any machine sewing!


If you ever find yourself stranded on a deserted island with no electricity make sure you have this pattern, 2m of boucle tweed, a few needles, two thousands miles of basting thread and of course, matching thread, a bit of trim (but you can always knock that up from coconut fibres) and you will be able to construct this jacket. The last and most unimportant item required for this jacket is the sewing machine.


It's from the Audrey side of the Hepburn collection and although she wore mostly Givenchy, I'm making Chanel, so there!

Fabric is from Craftswoman Fabrics (local shop). It is a rich dark navy blue boucle with a black strip of 'tinsel' woven in for shine and glitter. As I don't wear black, it's a great alternative to Chanel's Little Black Jacket.

Chanel Little Black Jacket

It took nearly three hours just cutting this out. I'm multi tasking on this one, doing lots of little things simultaneously - goes like this;

Marking up the lining pieces and the shell fabric pieces as and when I need them.

When I get bored doing that I can always do a bit of shaping and steaming.......

There are no darts on this jacket but a neat little way of adding shape. Gather up a bit at the edge of the side front with running stitches.

Sew a dart in a bit of interfacing and handstitch this in position - matching the dots on the side fronts.

This creates the bubble on the outside that you can see in the pic above.

Pull the running stitches up so that the interfacing bit lies flat on the inside but you have gathers on the outside.

Steam the living daylights out of the shell fabric until it shrinks and lies flat. Voila, as they say in Rue Cambon, a shaped piece of fabric without darts!












While that's cooling off, I can go back to crocheting a chain for the trim. Made with fibres pulled from leftover fabric and sewn (by hand) onto a grosgrain ribbon,

When I have enough trim, then I can go back to the 4 pockets - all hand sewn - attach the grosgrain ribbon, sew on the trim, turn in the seam allowances, catch stitch them down, slipstitch the lining in place and press. Basting all the way!

And when I've had enough of all this I can always go back to the hand bound buttonholes on the front.

Maybe one day, I'll actually be able to construct the jacket!