Gray Armani Jacket: Completed!

The finished gray Armani jacket.

What a week.  I finished my husband’s shirt last week, I made huge leaps forward in my project at work, and now I have my finished birthday jacket in my hands.  Even better, this jacket is the first real article of clothing that I’ve made for myself.  I couldn’t be happier.

To fix the problem with the sleeves, I marked the desired length of the sleeves and then carefully removed the cuffs using my seam ripper.  Next, I cut off 6″ in length from the bottom of the main sleeves to bring the sleeves up to the desired length.   While I had the seams open, I also decided to remove a bit of their width by simply restitching the side seam with a larger seam allowance.  I was able to take off an extra 1″ of width from each sleeve.  All that was left was to put the cuffs back on according to the instructions.

The final step was to slipstitch the sleeve lining in place.  When I cut 6″ off the sleeve, I also cut 6″ off the sleeve lining to keep it even.  But, I wish I’d been a bit more generous with the lining.  An extra inch would have made all the difference since I wanted the lining to hang on the sleeve, not pull on the sleeve.  I pushed the seam allowance down to 1/4″, slipstitched carefully, and managed to make it work.  But, next time I run into a sleeves-too-long issue, I’ll cut the lining after  I rework the sleeves.

I love the subtle Asian look to the jacket.  It seems fitting since my thoughts have been with that part of the world much of the last week.  My favorite part of the jacket is the buttons.  Here they are a bit closer up:

The jacket on a hanger, showing off the three beautiful buttons.

And, one last photo on the dress form to show you the full sweep of the collar:

The long line of the collar from an angle.

I hope to get some photos of the jacket on me this weekend so that I can load this project on my BurdaStyle page.