Maison Fauve Ispahan Jacket

I have made a lot of jackets over the years, lined and unlined, and this one appealed as a lightweight alternative to a cardigan or jumper, since I wear a lot of dresses. I was drawn by the princess seaming and the short but fairly fitted shape. I also specifically intended it as an upcycling/recycling project involving an orange Japanese textured silk thigh length ladies kimono that I had bought in Osaka - loved the fabric but just too boxy to be flattering. Having disassembled this garment, including its silk lining, I knew that I would need additional fabric for both contrasting yoke and the lining facings of the new, more fitted version.  I had some suitable silk in my stash, the gold contrast band in the photos, which I also used as facings

Unfortunately, using various recycled separate pieces of fabric made cutting it out very confusing, but that was not a fault of the pattern as such; I did find that I had cut out the back neck yoke in the  wrong fabric, and had cut two pieces that were the same, rather than opposites and had to cut further pieces. I did a basic toile of the jacket body pieces first, in a suitable weight of fabric from my stash, and although I had carefully checked the body measurements an sizes on the pattern, it was too snug, and I cut the main fabric in a larger size; it is quite fitted, which was part of the appeal, so err on the side of pessimism, I would suggest.

Making up - this is not a jacket pattern for a beginner! The contrasting yoke has quite challenging corners, and opposing curves, and the seam allowances are only 1cm.  Although it is collarless, getting it to all come together neatly was tricky, and the pattern gives little or no advice on understitching or grading the layers before turning and pressing. Even though it is fully lined, overlocking the fabric pieces before you start is highly recommended if it has any tendency to fray or ravel, as otherwise your seams could pull apart.

While the pattern pack comes with a quite attractive printed booklet, the assembly instructions are in French and English and are pretty sparse, and assume that you know what you should be doing with fused interlinings, seam finishes and mitred corners etc. The lining is fully bagged out, which is not my favourite technique, and if this is our first attempt at one of these, the illustrations and instructions are just too brief. Dealing with the sleeves and sleeve linings just made no sense at all in the instruction booklet, and the accompanying drawing made things worse, not better . There is a YouTube video if you hunt it down (I had to, because I just could not work out what to do with the sleeves) but it is in French, with no English subtitles available, and is helpful if you already know what you are doing. Unless you have some other reference books. articles/videos/experience to draw on, this is likely to be very off putting.

Having said all that, the final result looks great, although it took a while, and did need some unpicking and restitching at several points.  I will definitely make this pattern again in other fabrics. So good for me, but not for everyone, I suspect