Jenny's Jacket

Last Saturday we drafted a raglan sleeve in order to begin preparing our pattern, Simplicity1758,

for the jacket that Jenny had asked me to help her with. From this point forward, all of the posts I do about this jacket will be entitled, "Jenny's Jacket." For all of you who might like to follow along, this will hopefully make it easier for you to find the posts. The posts will also be labeled Jenny's Jacket. Just scroll to the bottom of the post and click on the label and it will take you to all of the posts that involve this jacket. 

Once again the jacket. Once I looked closely at the jacket I realized that it has a raglan sleeve and there is also a princess line seam in the jacket. Princess line seams are wonderful because they give you one more seam for alterations.         

I've chosen to use view A.

Because the pattern has a princess line seam,

you will need to put the two pattern pieces back together as you see in the above picture in order to draft the raglan sleeve. A small word of advice. Before you begin the drafting, cut all the seam allowances off of the pattern. If you leave the seam allowances on the pattern, your drafting can get very confusing. It's much less confusing to cut the seam allowances off and add them back once you have drafted all of your changes to the pattern.
For the next step, you will be following the instructions that I gave you last Saturday for drafting a raglan sleeve. You can see that post here.

 Once you have drafted the raglan sleeve, the front of your jacket pattern will look like the pattern above.

You will need to separate the pattern pieces. Be sure to include your grain lines.

I added on to my drawing so that it would look more like the front of the jacket from the pattern.

Now we need to add the pleats to the front of our jacket. The pleats look to be about 1 1/2" wide. Remember that there are 2 sides to a pleat, so you will need a 3" spread for each pleat. 

On a new piece of paper draw in the pleat lines. There are 4 pleats in the jacket so there are 4 spaces that are 3" wide and inbetween each pleat is 1 1/2" space. 

Fold the pleat lines as you see above. The first pleat looks to start about 2" from the neckline. Place your pattern piece on the pleat lines as you would like the pleats to lay on the front of the jacket. You can trace around your pattern as I did above or tape down the pattern. 

With the pleats taped down or held down, whatever is more comfortable for you, cut out the front of your jacket. 

Once it is cut, pull the top portion of the jacket pattern piece out. The pleats will only be on the right side of the jacket so the left pattern piece will not have the pleats. Our drafting is complete so let the sewing begin!! I'll return next Tuesday with my jacket cut and we'll talk about construction of the jacket. 

I have this wonderful piece of wool that I'm thinking about using, although I'm not sure. I need to think about it a bit more. I have a lovely piece of brown herringbone wool that I thought of for pants, but I may use it for the jacket. You'll see my decision next week :)
Please let me know if you have any questions.