Pattern Emporium Smitten

Here's Smitten, a simplified jeans-type jacket from Pattern Emporium. I liked their About Town popover top so well, I wanted to try another of their popular patterns. This one wasn't quite the success for me that About Town was, but I will wear it and learned a few things for future Pattern Emporium projects.

This was a "semi-precious" fabric, a cotton/linen from Japan, at least that's what the vendor said. I paid a lot for it and then regretted the purchase because afterwards I just couldn't see myself in it. After washing, it was scratchy. It has been in stash for a long time and I finally decided to just go ahead and use it for a tester because it gave me the guilts. Now that it's made up, I can see me wearing it over a simple dress in a narrow blue and white stripe in the summer when I'm feeling spunky.

I took a lot of time laying out the pattern pieces so that as many of the color splotches as possible ended up visible in the finished garment.  I also wanted to avoid yellow near my face, and took care to cut the yokes, center fronts, and center back from areas that had red splotches only.

Although it has plenty of body, the fabric was transparent enough that it would show the color of whatever was worn underneath. I underlined with a soft cotton batiste that took care of both the scratchiness and the see-through problem. It still didn't seem like a good idea to make the patch pockets or even just the pocket flaps because of the see-through issue, so they were left off.

Pattern changes - front pieces are included for a regular version and a full-busted version. I used the regular fronts, and chose the longer length (There is an ultra-cropped cutting line and the ones I've seen at that length are so cute - they're just not for me.) Added an extra 3/4 inch in length. I'm 5'8, but PE's cutting lines for their tall options are too long. I'm better off just adding a bit extra to the regular length.

The main lesson I learned is when sewing PE patterns, I should use the full bust option even though their instructions indicate that I don't need it. Yes, this jacket is wearable, but it is noticeably shorter in the front than the back, and the bottom band sticks out in the front, too. Allowing for the bust would take care of that - and that's something to note about the pattern. All those vertical seams are just for style; there's no shape built into them. I haven't compared the pattern pieces but I suspect that the full bust does have some shape added using those seams.

I didn't have enough red buttons in my button stash, so I used slightly smaller blue ones on the cuff. The pattern has square corners on the cuffs that I angled off. Square corners always seem to poke out and end up getting dragged in my soup...or whatever...

Just for fun, I used the color registration marks from the fabric selvedge as a little tab detail. I put one on the right front where a pocket would go, and another one at center back.

One other thing to mention - that top buttonhole gave me a lot of trouble. I had to rip it out twice, because no matter which way I fed my fabric into the machine, there was a thick seam that jammed the action of the buttonhole foot. I ironed it, hammered it, everything. If the yoke had been just a little deeper, there would have been enough room for the foot to avoid that thick seam. In the end, I had to do a zig-zag four-step buttonhole. Now that I think of it, the problem also could have been solved by using smaller buttons. 🤷 I like my bigger buttons.

I'm calling this my Crayola Jacket, and it will be fun to wear. It will be put away until springtime, and now I know what I needed to know about Smitten.