RTW Pattern Review Contest

 Hi everyone!
How is your weekend? It's been pretty rainy here so all I did was lounge around and ate (though I did get some sewing done as well!).

Well, even though I have so much going on with my life right now, I decided to enter Pattern Review's RTW contest. This is the decription on the contest page:

"Create a garment inspired by one that you have seen. The inspiration item can be from a Ready-To-Wear line, from the runway, or any other garment you have seen worn or pictured.  The garment must clearly be inspired by the original piece. It does not have to be, but can be, an exact copy."


Well, I still don't know if I'll be making an exact copy but I already decided what my inspiration will be and I spent the day making the pattern for the garment. This is my original inspiration:

Source

The Godet Jacket!
I looked at the voting guidelines a bit to see what exactly is expected from the contestants and it appears that the construction, fabric choice and embellishment are taking into account as much as the overall look of the garment (which makes sense!) so I decided to take this very seriously. Not only will this be a learning experience for me as I usually tend to take shortcuts when I can, I definitely going to try new techniques (such as inserting godets).

I'll be using a moss colored poly-cotton blend that kind of has a thick wool suiting feel to it. It took me a while to decide if the color and fabric will suit this jacket, and to be honest I'm ot fully convinced it'll work - but we'll have to see!

The coloring is very off in the picture - I'll try to get a picture during the day. The lining is kind of a beige color (see how off the coloring is?) and it's just poly satin - not the most luxurious form of lining but it's the best I can do with my budget!

The shell fabric has kind of a tweedy look to it which is the main reason for me being unsure of how well this fabric will work for the jacket

I broke up the process to make it easier for myself, I'll be posting about my progress as I go along and I'd love to hear what you guys think and if you have any tips (or notice any errors!) for me.

So:
1) Draft a pattern for the jacket - make a list of properties that I want to retain in my own design.
2) Prepare the muslin (this is one of those steps that I usually skip!)- the jacket must be on the tighter side.
3) Pretreat fabric (I probably won't share this part unless you guys want to see a picture of my washing machine).
4)  Cut out the fabric.
5) Embellishment: My inspiration has embelishment tipstiching on the collar and godets - should I recreate a form of embelishment myself?
6) Tailoring - As this contest does focus on constrution, I do want to incorporate tailoring techniques in my sewing. At first I wanted to pad stitch the collar but I can't seem to find hair canvas here in Israel and I don't think I'll have enough time to order it of the net, so I think I'll go for the fusible method. Also, I'll be adding shoulder pads and sleeve heads. hmm.. Any other tailoring methods I'm missing?
7) Assembling the jacket - dealing the the godets.
8) Lining - I still don't know what I'll be doing with the lining. I'll pose the question more thoroughly later.


Anyway, Step 1 is almost complete! I drafted the pattern for the jacket and the godets, I still have to modify the godets a bit to have a more curvier hem.

I'll take you through the process I went, it'll be nice to see it all in writing!
Let's look at the picture again:

Let's break the design down:
1) The basic design is made out shoulder princess seams. I love stylelines, I think they follow the curves of the body much better than darts so this makes me happy. From what I can tell there's an additional side panel to the jacket which I won't be adding- can you see this as well or a I making it up?
2) The godets are inserted into each styleline seam. They start a few inches below the waist and look to be at least as wide as each princess seam panel - wouldn't you say? There seem to be at least 7 godets (the side panel thing being a mystery to me) so that what I'll be doing!
3) The jacket closes up with 7 buttons (but I can't promise mine will too)
4) Te neckline is pretty high and sports a peter pan collar with a pretty tall collar stand
5) The shoulder pads in this jacket are quite thick, I will be using 1/4 shoulder pads as this style may be too much for me.
6) The sleeves are two pieced. I have a one piece sleeve that I drafted for another jacket so I'm wondering if to use that or to draft a two piece sleeve.- thoughts?

This is what I've got so far. Princess seam jacket body and the godet.
Next week - muslin and hopefully starting to sew the jacket!

I'll leave you (if you're still reading this) with a list of questions:
1) What do you think of the fabric? is it suitable for the design?
2) Any thoughts about the embellishment in the godets and collar? I thought of using gold topstitching thread to create the design.
3) Anyone know a good alternative to Hair Canvas? I really want to do some tailoring here! speaking of which, any other tailoring methods I can use here?

Looking back at this post it was a whole lot of rambling - do you find this interesting? would you like to see more about this jacket?

Have a great week everyone!