I had asked for the foreman for a birthday gift as I had been eyeing ‘French worker’ jackets for well over a year so jumped when I saw there was a sewing pattern in such a similar style. It turned out to be just the jacket my boyfriend, David, was looking for so I made my first one for his birthday.
He wanted the same French jacket like those we’ve been seeing in bric à bracs splattered with crusty paint and a high price tag but minus the accumulated pigments, amount of cash and in a subtler, more versatile hue than the bright, primary blue they tend to appear in. I was looking for a fabric that replicated the stable and slightly heavy handle of hardwearing cotton twill but it was hard to find what I was looking for.
In the end I bought some dark blue cotton twill from Fabworks. Listed as medium weight, it certainly was much lighter than I expected; super soft, supple, creases and frays easily. Not entirely what I had in mind, and as a result the jacket is more delicate than planned but it is lovely fabric nevertheless. At only £4 a metre it was fantastic value for money, the fabric looks and feels high quality, although it attracts little hairs and fibres easily. I used some wooden buttons I had in my stash I bought off Amazon, the orange tones of the wood stain work so well with the navy blue. You need a small amount of lightweight interfacing for this project too.
It was a quicker and more straightforward sew than I was expecting, other than the fact I spent half the time anxing over attaching the collar and wondering how on Earth it could possibly fit to the neckline when I realised that I had missed out a pattern piece...(the Collar Stand is a cut on fold piece and I didn't notice you needed to cut two, as all the other on the fold cuts were 1). It all fell together nicely then and I had no problems. I didn’t sew the very top button and button hole as David specified he preferred the collar as shown in my photos rather than the option of doing it up to the top.
The sleeves are constructed with two seams and two pattern pieces which was interesting, I'm not quite in love with this detail as it made the sleeves hang funny when you try to fold the jacket up; they pull at weird parts of the armhole despite my many notches. Luckily this isn't noticeable when worn. They are also unusually long, going way past the hem of the jacket (which is not what is shown in the sketch). I had to shorten them quite a bit to fit.
I would definitely recommend this pattern, the topstitching around the hem and edges isn't difficult and adds a more interesting finish, I used Taylor's chalk to help get a super straight line. It would be great if this had an optional lining, but I think maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to work out how to add one.
This was one of those lovely occasions when it’s much cheaper to do it yourself (depending on fabric choice of course): I made the smallest, size 36, and bought three metres of fabric. I had a reasonable amount left over and have managed to fit myself another Foreman out of it that I have modified by shortening the body pieces and sleeves by 14cm.
I think the shoulders are ever so slightly too broad for David, which means they definitely will be for me, I will need to look into how to make a shoulder adjustment in future...But I left them as is for this version as I had no idea how to go about doing this and was impatient to see if I could squeeze another Foreman out of my scraps. That’s two jackets for £12 (the buttons would have been about £2.75 for a pack of 10), an extra £13.50 if you are buying the pattern, which comes to just over £14 for each jacket including the pattern, and £7.38 if, like me, the pattern was a gift! I already have plans to make this is in another Fabworks fabric; a stiffer, double sided twill in 'butterscotch and khaki'.
Pattern: Merchant and Mills, The Foreman size 36.
Supplies: Dark navy twill from Fabworks, 3m.
Interfacing and 4 buttons.
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