Tag: Three-piece suit

Three-Piece Suit (part 3 – Jacket)

So, it’s been a while, but I finally got myself into gear and finished the jacket for my suit. I’d put on the new front a while back, and I had sewn the lining, but getting the lining in the jacket.. a whole other story. It wasn’t actually hard, took me a couple of hours over two days after I set my mind to it. The scariest thing was to make the buttonholes. I’ve had buttonholes completely fail before and it was the very last step, also one of the more crucial ones. Luckily it all went reasonably well and the button holes function fine.

The introduction to this jacket was written up in Three-Piece Suit (part 0.5 – Failed Jacket). The jacket was based on Burda 5/2009 jacket 102 A, changes included shortening the body length, reducing the length of the arms and making the front pointy. I also added facings to the lower back edge and the sleeves. I reduced the width of the front, because Initially I only wanted one button. In the end I decided to make too, to make the jacket hang nicer. I really like that it has pockets and I included a loop for hanging it on a coat rack, in case that is ever necessary.

I should probably have worn real shoes for the full picture, but I was too lazy. At least the picture shows the full finished suit. It’s done! YAY!!

I’m quite proud of myself for actually finishing the project and finishing it to my liking, mostly. Now, I just need to continue to wear it. For the future, I still have a couple of sweater bodies that need to be sleeved. I have finished knitting a hat, poncho-thing and octopus that I’ll let you know about. My holiday cards have already been made, they just need to be personalized. Next plans include another graduation dress for January and that’s about all I’m sure about.

Three-Piece Suit (part 2 – Pants)

After finishing the vest, I went straight into the pants. I chose to use the same base as the plaid pantsuit, with the regular back pockets. The main difference I wanted was to have some form of interesting closure. I’ve been looking at men’s pants on pinterest to find some nice details. I settled for a cross over long strap like this.

After figuring out the pattern, the first thing that happened was that I found out that my fabric is less wide than the fabric I normally use for pants. As such, it was a little more effort to lay out as I couldn’t align the bottoms of front and back with each other. I also cut the front waistband twice as long as it should be, without shaping it. I’d planned to cut it to shape once it was on my pants.

I used the same lining as for the vest and went on to sew the thing together. I used most the same methods as for all the other pants I made, but for some reason, it turned out smaller than normally? Not sure how that happened, so I let the side seams out a little, which fixed most of the problems. I’ve been using a tutorial for the fly front with a separate fly shield, it’s here.

After attaching the waistband, I needed to figure out how to shape it correctly and get the eyelet for the strap worked out. Can’t remember exactly how, but it seems to have worked fairly decently. The only downside of these pants is that there are a few wrinkles below the waistband which pull just a little to the outside. However, I’ve decided that I can live with it and that I’m probably the only one who will see it in real life.

The pants feel comfortable on. I’ve worn the vest and the pants together recently with a button down shirt and the purple plaid jacket and it looks so cool. Fake it till you make it starts with the outfit, right?!

Three-Piece Suit (part 1 – Vest)

In the quest for a three-piece suit, I also needed a vest. I’ve found a liking for Simplicity Naaimode patterns since the seam allowance is already included in them. I’d remembered that there was a pattern for a vest in one of my magazines, so I quickly looked it up. It was in Simplicity Naaimode 18. There I discovered that I really liked the back of one of the patterns (model 59, bottom right) and the front of one of the others (model 58, top right). So I copied all the relevant pattern pieces and merged two together to create the perfect vest.

Since I wanted a little bit of interest, the vest is sewn on the ‘wrong’ side of the fabric. This side has dots instead of dashed lines. The main difference is that the vest appears a little darker. I made no alterations to the pattern and just sewed it together with the same lining I used for the jacket version 1. For the closure, I used some black & white ribbon and attached super small silver-y buttons on the edge. I want it to peep out above the jacket, but not below the jacket – hence the new jacket fronts.

I really love the twisted strap detail in the back, and I love the shape of the neckline. It feels quite flattering. I managed to understitch parts of it, which helps it to lie flat. All in all, I’m very happy with this part of my three-piece suit. On to the pants!

Three-Piece Suit (part 0.5 – Failed Jacket)

So, for some reason I really wanted to have a three-piece suit. I’m not sure why, but I decided that this was a thing that needed to happen. So I started leafing through the pattern magazines and eventually settled on Burda 5/2009 jacket 102 A.

I’d found the last 4 meters of a bolt of grey stuff with a white running stitch at the front and dot-pattern at the back. I hoped that I would be able to make a three-piece suit out of it. So a jacket, a vest and pants. I cut out the jacket in a table cloth and fit it. I needed to take three cm out of the length above the waist, so I had some fun with paper, scissors and a pencil. I also wanted to have one button at the front, so I took the front in a little. I sewed it all up in the new fabric and it fit well. Then I added the lining and everything went wonky.

The lining was too short, so I tried all kinds of fixes apart from cutting out a longer lining. So I chucked it in the corner and started on the vest. After finishing the vest, it turned out that the vest peeped out from underneath the jacket, sneak peek in the picture. Queue plan B! Ripping out the center front pieces and re-drawing the pattern. Update on that in the future.