I love blazers. I love them so much that I wear them with things you might not expect...like baby doll dresses. (I learned to do that in South Korea.) However, blazers are really best worn in cold weather. (Or when your office cranks the a.c. in the summer!) Anyways, I already have a black blazer that I love, but I found the Merona jacket below at Goodwill for a dollar and couldn't pass it up because I'd been wanting to make a warm weather blazer option.
First, cut the sleeves off wherever you want. (Make sure to add about an inch for seam allowance.)
Turn it inside out, and fold the outer part in about an inch.
Fold the lining in toward the part you just folded. (In other words, the raw edges are now inside the two pieces of fabric.)
Pin it down, but make sure your pins are about 1/4" from the edge of the lining.
All right....now look at the next three pictures in sequence. (You are folding the black part down, holding it with your left hand, and with your right hand taking the pin out and re-pinning it.)
This is what it should look like when you are done with that step.
Turn the sleeves right side out. Fold the cuff part back so you can see the pins. Then set your machine to it's blind stitch setting. (I accidentally went ahead and sewed it, and then forgot that I hadn't taken a picture...so that's why the seam is already sewn! Sorry!)
This is what it looks like when you are done. I'ts kinda messy, but that's okay because it's inside the sleeve. The main thing is for the raw edges to be hidden.
You can wear it like this.
Or if you kept enough length in the sleeves, you can fold them up.
I like to watch Youtube videos of fashion shows when I'm bored. I get really bored shopping for clothes lately. I hate spending money and nothing affordable ever looks very cute. (Norma Kamali had some awesome stuff at Walmart for awhile, but that ended years ago.) Every once in awhile I get inspired by a fashion show, however. Right now, I'm overflowing from this Spring Summer 2013 Ready-to-Wear collection from Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld:
I just really liked the little, short bolero top things going on in a lot of the dresses. The reason is because chopping off the top portion of a dress just above the waist helps to emphasize the top region of the body, while really making the waist look tiny. You don't see this style a lot because this look usually makes a woman resemble a matador.
For some reason the plaid dress at 5:50, I really liked a lot. I drew it in my notebook of ideas, then I looked at my fabric cache, and three ideas popped right into my head. I thought I would try them in jersey to add some comfort into the style.
To make a pattern, I went to my closet and picked out some things I already have and I know fit me:
I used the cream colored shirt I'd bought when I lived in Korea as the basis of my pattern. I really like it. It's cute, comfortable, and hides a lot. I used the blue assymetric shirt my husband bought me in Italy on our honeymoon as a guideline for how short the top part should be. The D&G shirt I just kind of used to determine how wide the top bolero part should be.
I also look at modcloth.com every once in awhile for ideas. If I see an interesting idea, I always want to see if I can try to figure it out. I came across this shirt: Dear to Me Top and wondered how they'd made that bow in the front. Instead of being appliceed, it seems to be stitched into an actual seam in the shirt, so I had to try it.
I draw my patterns on that brown paper that comes as packing filler in boxes of stuff I order online. I forgot to put the sleeve pattern on here, but you get the idea of what my patterns looked like. I extended the length of that cream colored Korean shirt to make more of a dress length. The shorter bodice parts are the bolero part that goes over the longer dress. That straight part in between the longer dress and the bolero is the pattern for the ties of the bow.
This is what it looks like, finished:
I think this would look good on any frame, because for those who don't have a bust, it adds a bust. For those who do have a bust, it hides it. Same thing with shoulders and hips. The only thing I might worry about is a gut, but at least on this dress, the bow kinda hides that too!
From the back. You can really see how the top part makes the waist look tiny. This cut gives a girl confidence because if her butt happens to stick out a little bit, that might be a cute thing here!
I know this bow looks a little "Minnie Mouse-ish," but I rather like it.
I pouffed the sleeves at the bottom rather than the top for a slightly different feminine flair.
As you can see, it's all one piece. I attached it by the collar of both parts. I actually did this wrongly and had to take the stitches out the first time. It's misleading, because normally you stitch right sides together. . .but not so here, because both right sides have to be facing the same way. That doesn't make sense unless you are doing it, so nevermind!
