Experiments In Casual Contemporary Style

[ChattanCat]

I'm not sure I understand the darts yet. Most jackets have a center back vent that is closed up and two side vents are opened. Do the darts eliminate the need for opening the two side vents?

[Bugbear]

I'm not sure I understand the darts yet. Most jackets have a center back vent that is closed up and two side vents are opened. Do the darts eliminate the need for opening the two side vents?

I'm still experimenting with it, Wally, but they might. Think of the darts more as a giant box pleat on the back of the jacket, and they are tacked down at a point right around the natural waist.

Normaly in a conversion, you open up a back-side seam on eather side of a jacket that is a little too small around the waist. I am taking a jacket that fits regularly, or it could be a little big, around the waist. That slack in the waist is taken up in these two pleats on the back. The center seam is closed up like in a regular jacket conversion.

Even if I do have to open those side seams, this tecnique does away with the need for the panel flaps behind the vent.

I'm still fooling with it, so it might end up a little differently than I describe in my first post on this.

[dfmacliam]

I think that will look real smart once you get it made, suits you very well I might add.

[Bugbear]

I think that will look real smart once you get it made, suits you very well I might add.

Thank you, and thank you all for sticking with the thread. I am continueing to experiment with things beyond what I have in pictures.

[Bugbear]

Ok, I had to unpin the jacket pleats to cut the jacket correctly. I have pinned them back in place and here is what I notice.

If I fold the back of the jacket along the back-side seams, it creates the back flap of the jacket quite well. This would be the flap that is between the two side vents. That edge created by folding along the back-side seam, which will point toward the front of the jacket, is pinned down to the jacket which creates a fold on the inside of the pleat.

The pleat is pinned down somewhere around the waist level of the jacket. This all creates a giant box pleat across the back side of the jacket, and this box pleat is the back flap of the jacket instead of the back flap being created by opening the back-side seams as in the standard jacket conversion.

It also takes up some slack in the front of the jacket and now it hangs a little more like a single button jacket, which is not meant to be closed at the front.

If any of that makes sense, here is what I notice. This back flap needs to be pressed to stay in place, but it also needs to have some stitching to make the folded edge's two sides stay together as if they were a single piece. Think of it as a bird's tail laying down the back of the jacket after the stitching instead of a box pleat. It will also need to be stitched down at a couple of points along the natural waist line instead of the single point where it is pinned right now. The neat thing is that the back-side seam is already flared from the shape of the skirts around the jacket, so the flap has a little bit of a flare to it. I did not cut back the hem on the back two panels of the jacket because all this folding changes the places where the hem will fold, and I needed a bit of wiggle room.

I understand this is very difficult to follow, but I will keep trying to think of better ways to describe it as I work on the jacket.

[Bugbear]

I trimmed the back section of the jacket to the seam allowance, folded up the hem, and it seems to work. I need to get inside of that flap section and trimm down some of the overlapping allowances and put interfacing in the hem across the flap, but it is pinned up and looks good to me.

The fit of the jacket across the small of my back feels good with the pleating back there, and the hang of the front of the jacket is a lot more like a single button jacket designed to not close now.

I have been marking the points of where I want to put the curve and tapered front hem on either side. The curve is starting a little ways below the button and buttonhole that are staying on the jacket.. and I am deciding where to end the taper from the bottom of the curve; possibly at the front-side seam, or close to it.

This jacket has slit pockets with flaps. They are about where I want the bottom of the pockets to be, so I will make patch pockets that end slightly passed the slit pocket. However, I will leave the slit open and let it be an extention of the patch pocket. The flap will come off, and I might put the pocket flap on the patch pockets. The lining of the pocket was actually serving as an interfacing in the hem, so it will be trimmed and sewn to fit the taper in the front.

I do not use bias tape to form the curv of the jacket, rather I sew the curve into a patch of the fabric from the jacket placed right side to right side, then turned. This is somewhat like the jacket is constructed in the first place and it seems to work fine. I could also try to unstitch the seam joining the front and back of the lapel face fabric in the area of the curve, then use that in the same way as the patch. This is exactly how the original curve of the front of the jacket was formed. After the curve is turned, the hem of the taper is then shaped from the bottom of the curve back.

One thing that I will not do to a jacket is try to reshape the roll and length of the lapel, so everything is positioned in relation to that.

[Bugbear]

A few new developments in this jacket saga have come up.

After trying on everything with the kilt and sporran, I realized that the pleating in the back has changed the hang of the front of the jacket enough that the raised curve to tapered hem line is not needed. In fact, it would not work at all. Instead, a simple cutaway curve just below the second button will work fine. The jacket hangs open wide enough that it doesn't interfere with the sporran, however, I get the feeling that it would all look better with a third button between the two that are on there already. The hang isn't perfect in the front, but I think it will work.

I have started a new thread on this, but as a final note there is this. The slit pockets will work out on this jacket because I have removed the pocket flaps, and will attach them to the outside of the jacket and the bottom lip of the slit pockets to make a kind of cuff for the pocket on the outside. Because the cutaway taper is not needed anymore, the pockets have a bit more room.

I think that's it.