minoru: finished!

without further ado… here is my beautiful minoru jacket from sewaholic patterns.

i am pleased as punch with how my jacket turned out! most of the credit of course goes to the wonderful pattern. usually i like how my garments turn out in spite of the pattern, not because of the pattern. ya know? what can i say, i’m hard to please.

i needed a spring weight jacket and i was inspired by the anorak-style jackets i see a lot. curiosity finally got the better of me and i just looked up anorak on wikipedia. so the anorak jacket has clearly evolved from it’s original form, and really the drawstring waist is the only thing that mine (or other current models) have in connection to the original. side note: anorak is also slang for someone who has an obsessive niche interest, often not acknowledged or understood by the general public… and here i thought we were discussing my jacket, not the wearer… haha!

so let’s start at the beginning… i used a crushed light to medium weight rayon that has a slight sheen. the fabric color (it has a brown undertone) is super hard to capture acurately, but these pics do a pretty good job because i managed just the right lighting. i picked out a dusty rose bemberg lining and decided on contrast zips that (perfectly!!) match my lining to give the jacket a little color to break up the taupe(?) color. p.s. i loooooove my lining, it makes my jacket incredibly comfy. seriously, i could live in this thing!

i cut the hood as a 3-pc with an drawstring (made from self-bias, also used for zipper pulls), added a vertical upper left zippered welt pocket, added patch with flap pockets, a zip facing, changed up the cuffs and made a waist drawstring casing. whew! all the information about these changes are in my past posts (linked at the bottom). despite all these changes/additions, i managed to sew it up in under a week’s time, and that’s with taking two days to ponder the pockets! it just goes to show how great this pattern really is. tasia has considered every detail, and the method of construction gives such a professional finish, i’m still a little amazed that i made it myself. seriously, if you haven’t ventured into outerwear/jackets this is a great place to start.

one aspect of the jacket i didn’t want to think about too much was the cost. the cost of sewing is a much-discussed topic ’round the blogs, and i really do my best to chose my fabrics and notions and patterns carefully to keep my costs less than their RTW counterpart. this jacket (while it cost more than i anticipated) is something of an exception due to the frequency with which it’ll be used. much like my winter coat, this is my go-to jacket. i don’t have a closet full of previous years’ models. so here’s the cost breakdown (including shipping costs for the pattern and zippers):

• pattern: $23.48
• fabric: $18.98
• lining: $17.47
• interfacing: $2.99
• notions: $28 ($19 of this is from my special ordered zippers, the rest is thread, cording, etc)

this brings my total cost to around $90 USD. so, not terrible, though i was hoping to keep it under $75. the RTW jackets i was looking at were in the $75-$150 range, so i still feel pretty good about that. in fact, the bulk of the cost was the pattern and the zips. arguably, these are the two things that really made my jacket what it is! i had many moments of doubt during the construction. at one point, the fabric began to remind me of one of those capes they put around you at the hair salon and i was worried it would end up looking like a shiny blob with a pretty zipper. fortunately, that didn’t happen and i love the outcome.

i’m not sure what else to say about this jacket, so i’ll leave you with links to my previous posts.

• under the hood
• the pockets
• the final details

later daahhhlings…

—lisa g.