When my long-time dear friend Louse shipped me a box of fabric – yukatas from her years in Japan and airy dresses she had worn when she lived in India – she included a beautiful long stole or wrap. It had been made in Japan by Nuno, the visionary company that combines old practices with new technologies to create stunning textiles.
With justified trepidation about my capacity to deal with such a complex textile, I decided to make a jacket. The fabric was gorgeous. It was also very black and deeply textured, making it difficult to cut straight lines and to find the stitches I had sewn. I marked everything with basting thread & tailor's tacks and proceeded to make a series of bad choices and some good ones.
Bad Choice #1: The Pattern
I decided on the Vic Mum Cardigan pattern from Ikatee. Past history should have warned me that there could be issues with the neckline gaping, and there were. In addition, for reasons I don't understand because I am such an amateur, the back of the Nuno jacket ended up far too wide and voluminous, requiring the first Bad Choice Rescue, an improvised box pleat.
Bad Choice #2: The Facing
A blue upholstery silk seemed like a good idea at the time, but the shape of the facing was all wrong, and it just sat there being boring. So I removed it.
I auditioned many fabrics for my second try at a facing, including some incredible gold silks, red silks, gray silks, orange silks, batiks, and vintage Asian textiles. I was constantly surprised by the awkward competition among beauties where I had anticipated harmony.
Eventually I went on-line shopping and found the perfect thing at Harts Fabric. Once Upon a Time - Bouquet Burst was pretty with a bit of whimsy and a lovely drape.
Helped by on-line tutorials, I drafted a wider facing pattern and installed it. At this point I figured the big challenges were behind me and that all I needed to do was hem the Nuno jacket and finish the sleeves with a small inward-turning cuff.
Bad Choice #3: The Zipper
I showed the work-in-progress to my friend, Alice Frost, who rides shotgun on these projects and has great style plus good ideas. We liked the general look, loved the fabric, and were pretty satisfied. Then one of us had the bright idea: "How about a zipper?" Not a finessed, invisible zipper but one with nerve, verve, and dash -- a big sport zipper to play off the utterly elegant and artful fabric.
I removed and then reinstalled the facing to accommodate the substantial zipper, all the while feeling that the work was sloppy. Wrangling all the moving parts -- the radical texture of the fabric, the blackness, the stiff zipper, and the fluid facing -- was way above my pay grade. I was getting into the weeds.
The zipper absolutely did not work.
Notice the out-of-kilter neck facing, the flopping neckline, and the slanted zip.
I had been in the clutches of the Genie of Wishful Thinking, hoping this would all work out in the end.
Good Choice #1: Go Simple with the Facing
I removed both the zipper and the “Once Upon A Time” facing.
The eventual solution turned out to be simple black linen with a flash of red satin to bind the edge. I was gradually learning to let the Nuno fabric speak for itself.
The texture was indefatigable. For as many times as I unpicked seams and exchanged one element for another, the fabric did not weaken or appear overworked. I - not the fabric - was the one who was tired. Dreading making button holes in such a highly dimensional material, I was tempted to call it a day and and declare the project a button-less cardigan.
But the length of deeply beautiful and complex fabric had been passed into my hands from Louise who, among many other remarkable qualities, never quits. She has moved through the world with imagination, brilliance, determination, and grace. I owed the project equal dedication.
No buttonholes, no problem. What about a button-and-loop closure system?
For that element, I carefully followed Doina Alexei’s brilliant method which depends on careful measuring and a paper template. It was challenging for my arthritic fingers, and delightfully weird to be sewing through paper, but I managed. The system suited the nature of the fabric.
Bad Choice #4 Going Cuff Crazy
By now I should have learned to choose the simple path, but I could not leave well enough alone. I constructed and installed at least four different cuff structures. None were right.
Good Choice #2: Stay Simple
In the end I abandoned the idea of cuffs and installed a small satin binding inside the sleeve.
What this jacket had needed all along was a bit of red and the Nuno magic.
Kommentare