The "Uptown Jacket" makes me wish we had somewhere to go!

Over a month ago I came across these darling patterns, at Make It Perfect. The Uptown Jacket caught my eye as a really sweet style for little girls. I bought it instantly, and it's been sitting in my sewing room collecting dust ever since. Suddenly I remembered this Anna Maria Horner "receiving line" fabric (which I have now learned is discontinued!!), which I had been saving for "something special". I knew that as long as I didn't mess up, this pattern and this fabric could be just that.



The pattern was great. I really don't have any general complaints. My only caution would be about the sleeves. If you haven't done many sleeves, this one might be frustrating.

I've grown accustomed to starting a project and having in done a few hours later. So, when I started tracing my pattern pieces on Friday afternoon, I really thought someone would be wearing the jacket around town on Saturday. But that was NOT the case. It's not so much that it's complicated. In fact, there are only four steps in the instructions. But because it's reversible you are basically sewing two jackets at the same time. So, it was slow and a bit tedious. Finally when it was time to sew the sleeves in, I started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel (too bad it was 1:21AM Monday morning, in Korea)!

As you sew, you work with a certain degree of hesitation. What if it's not going to fit? What if I mess it up? What if I picked the wrong fabrics? And you look at every step along the way for validation that everything is going to work out in the end. For some reason it took nearly until the last step to have that feeling of validation on this project.

But, when Ruby crawled out of bed early this morning, she was so happy to see such a cute and cheerful jacket waiting to greet her. And I was so delighted when she went and picked jeans and a solid color t-shirt because she said it "matched" the jacket. As I watched her walking into school, I knew that it had turned out just as I had hoped it would, and I was finally so very happy.







Anyway, this is NOT a quick project, at least it wasn't for me. But I love the end result, and so I'll probably sew it again.

The only thing I would change next time around is, rather than lining all my main fabric in fusible interfacing, I think I would either try using fusible fleece, or a thin quilt batting. When it was too late to make that change in this jacket, I went online to find what others had decided on that point, and found another lady who said she made it her first time with batting and loved it. I was worried that it wouldn't really be warm enough for a January jacket, but the girls confirmed to me that they were in fact "hot" when they had it on.

Anyway, that's the review. Another great pattern to love and recommend.




In other news, the designer felt arrived this weekend. Maybe my next post will be a review of it's merits, if it has any, other than just being beautiful.

P.S. Remember the pinafore smock?? I kind of thought it was missing something...




...Now I don't think that anymore.