Minerva Tracey Jacket — apple franca

Feb 23

Feb 23 Minerva Tracey Jacket

This project has been the longest in the making because half way through my sewing machine died, in such spectacular style that it couldn't even be fixed by the sewing machine shop, but had to be sent back to Juki. A needle broke and wedged itself between the gears in such a way that it destroyed both of them, which is impressive for like a cm of metal. The shop guy said he'd never seen this before.

Anyway, bad sewing machine luck notwithstanding, the jacket is now finally finished.

It is the Tracey, a chore jacket with a lot of details. Nice style lines and a lot of topstitching and four pockets which you can't see at all on this, but it's all there! I also really liked that it is shaped for women, and not completely straight/unisex as many chore jackets are. So it fits over my hips without being loose on top which is nice. I actually think this would also be nice in a lighter fabric as a shirt.

I'd never used a Minerva Exclusive pattern before, I was impressed. They're printed on normal A0 paper, not tissue paper, and the instruction booklet is a glossy A4 book.

There are two size ranges, misses is the smaller sizes with a B cup and women the larger with a D cup. Based on my measurements, I could have gone for either size H (third largest in misses) or size K (smallest in women). I went for H. I think my thinking was that this gives me the flexibility to go both up and down, although given this is a pre-printed paper pattern and it’s now cut out in the H size, that is not particularly likely to actually happen. In didn’t make any adjustments and this fits me well, including going over the hips comfortably, which is where i usually struggle, and there’s no problem with the cup size either,

The fabric is another new Minerva Exclusive print on demand base, the stretch woven denim twill (there’s also a dfenim without stretch, which I’ve not tried). It is cotton with 2% Lycra `nd it's got 20% stretch widthways. It feels very stable to sew, not drapey at all, it’s not so much stretchy as it has a bit of give. I would describe it as a medium weight, although Minvera describe it as medium to heavy. My needle did struggle through it a bit where there were loads of layers you had to topstitch through (and broke obviously!). I sewed most of this with my standard universal needle but after I got the machine back I changed to a thicker one and that helped.

The print is called Pearl Pansies, I think it works well for a jacket, I didn't fancy something too multicoloured because printed denim can be a bit naff, can't it. But this is monochrome, but still interesting. It doesn't half hide the pockets though!

Anyway, that's me, very successful make all round!