The Yellow Flowered Pique Jacket
When I was working on the Linen and Cotton book, I searched, understandably, for the prettiest cottons and linens I could find for the sample garments. I fell in love with this one immediately - it’s from the Italian designer Gai Mattiolo, and it’s pique, meaning it’s got a nice bit of surface interest as well as a little bit of internal padding. Perfect for a jacket! Here is NYC-based Dancer Lauren Shoemaker modeling it...
I used a Vogue Ungaro suit pattern - there was originally a sleeveless dress as a part of the ensemble as well, but that was long ago given to a girlfriend. Happily, the jacket remains, and I love it as much as I did when I was making it.
I remember following the pattern directions to a T - something I don’t always do - but in this case, it worked well. The pattern directions suggested self-lining the jacket - fortunately, the pique was soft and pliable enough that I knew that would work just fine. I did depart from that instruction in the sleeves, though. I felt that pique-lined sleeves just wouldn’t feel very good–nor would they be supple enough–so I lined them with green silk crepe de chine...
The jacket lining (which sort of served as an underlining as well) was staystitched to the fashion fabric around the armscye, and the crepe de chine lining was then pulled up from the inside of the sleeve and fell-stitched into place by hand. If you look carefully, you’ll see a dart on the inside of the lining, right at the top of the sleeve. It eliminates a little extra fulllness, and allows the sleeve lining to fit very easily in to the armscye.
You’ll also see a lot of topstitching–as per the pattern directions...
And a couple of tips, once you figure out exactly what your parameters are (how far the stitching will be from the edge the garment, and how far apart the individual rows will be): stitch slowly, and press the garment after each row of stitching. I’m not at all sure why that second piece of advice works so well, but it does. You’ll get far less distortion that way–trust me! In the image below you can see the topstitching on the sleeves. The thread tails have all been buried inside and I added a couple of layers of silk organza before I topstitched, just to add a little bit of loft...
One more important addition: you can see a sleeve head tucked inside the seam allowances at the top of the sleeve. It’s more important than you might think: it nicely fills out the space between the very top of the sleeve and the beginning of the upper arm. There’s always a bit of space there, so sleeves tend collapse, and once that happens you lose the visual treat of a nicely-defined shoulder.
