Home Stretch.

I am finally getting over the grave disappointment over a very poor judgement error by one of my children. Today I will be finishing up a list of "corrective actions" that will be taken over the next 12 months. It is really a big question mark in my brain how such an intellectually intelligent person can have a huge momentary lapse in judgement, however, we all make mistakes. Some big, some small, and we do get over them. Everyone has to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences of one's behavior.

Moving on to jacket thoughts...I'm headed down home stretch with McCall's 5276, pictured below. The collar and facings are done, the sleeves have been lined and they're ready to insert into the jacket. Here's the jacket so far, although I still have to give it a good steam press today. The buttons (I love these buttons!) are simply placed on the fabric to get a better idea how the jacket front will look when done. The buttons are edged with a gold finish and have an abalone-like face. So unique! The kind of buttons one usually does not find in mall-store RTW. One thing I've noticed thus far with View C (the yellow illustration on the pattern cover) is that my collar is not nearly as big as the illustration. That's fine by me, just an observation at this point though.

When I was tissue-fitting the jacket, I was mulling over the addition to length. I decided on +1 1/4 inches, but now wish I would have left it at 2". It's still fine, and really, those short jackets are in so all is still well. The length is merely my personal preference. And what is really funny about these jackets lately is the proportion. The patterns are designed for a 5'6" pattern model and I'm about 5'7" with a very short waist. My height comes from my long legs, not my torso. Some of my jackets lately have been lengthened by as much as 3 inches to give me, what I perceive, a proper proportion. McCall's 5007, was one of those jacket patterns needing the 3". The hemline would have been virtually at my waist had I not added that length, and the pattern illustration for 5007 does not show the hemline at the waist either. It looks to me like it's about 3" below the waist in the pattern illustration. Here's the Patternreview link for my review on my most recent jacket from that pattern, with links to two others I made in that review.:

http://sewing.patternreview.com/cgi-bin/readreview.pl?readreview=1&reviewnum=21238

So I've been really checking the length of these patterns lately. They seem to be running overly short and I don't know why. Maybe it's a McCall's thing? We'll see. I think the next jacket I'm making is going to be a Burda that I purchased in October.

One thing for sure--I'm so glad to be using up some of my Pattern Review Weekend wools from 2006 and 2007.