Burda 6898 Velvet Suit - Part 1 (Tuxedo Jacket)

I've been getting more and more into tailoring recently, and I haven't been able to shirk the idea of making myself a tux. There was a black tie do I was attending at the end of January and I thought it would be pretty cool to do away with the dresses and turn up to it in actual black tie. I have so far made one proper suit blazer and one pair of trousers (which will be making their way onto the blog soon...), so I don't have a huuuge amount of experience in this area...but all the more reason to try it I guess!

The design I went for was black velvet jacket with black satin shawl lapels and black satin lining, with matching slim trousers and bow tie. 

It was very tempting to just go completely out there and get/make/alter myself a veiled satin top hat like below, but worried I'd look a bit too cabaret. But I do think this hat needs to come into my life in the very near future...

(also, check out my Pinterest board for other inspiration images for this outfit!)

Dior 2010 (I believe)

Tempting as it was to try and draft my own pattern, I figured I'd play it safe(ish) with a part-tested commercial pattern, Burda 6898. I've previously used this to make some trousers (again, stay tuned for a blog post) and liked it, so thought I'd have another go with that and while I'm at it, why not use their (B) shawl jacket pattern as well? The jacket is quite a lot longer than I wanted, so I shortened it to the length of (A) - which turned out to be an inch or two shorter than I'd have liked. Urgh. I should really know to check that kind of thing by now!

I managed to order the wrong type of velvet (it was too shiny for my liking) but only settled on re-buying it after I'd already cut out everything from the shiny stuff...yeah, that was stupid. Not entirely sure what to do with it now, except for making a spare, suspiciously similar suit.

Shiny on the left, matte(r) on the right

Anyway, I fell completely in love with the re-ordered fabric (unsurprising, as it is the exact same type of velvet as the Vintage Not-So-Fancy dress and the Scrooge Dress) so I quickly went through and cut everything out again. For the lining and the shawl lapel, I used some gorgeous medium-weight black satin. I also used some random suiting material (bought purely because it was ultra cheap) to interline the velvet - with hindsight I should have used something thicker or doubled up on the front sections as the jacket ended up quite lightweight - but I guess I'll know for next time!

I went through and basted all the interlining pieces to the velvet pieces then sewed up the jacket shell.

 

Then I clearly got bored of taking pictures of my progress as I don't have any more until we get to the buttons. And then I don't have any after the buttons. Basically, I just followed the pattern. Do that and you'll be fine. Looks like I'd better show you these buttons then.

For these, I just bought some cover buttons - 1" for the front closure, and 5/8" for the 6 sleeve buttons. This was my first ever attempt at covering buttons, and trying to do so with satin made this virgin experience extra fun. They ended up a little lumpy as you can probably tell from the photo, though I doubt anyone would ever notice this when I'm actually wearing it. I mean, they'd have to be pretty damn close and pretty damn keen on buttons to spot that kind of thing...

So anyway, here's what the jacket looks like on my mannequin. It's not my best sewing - the bottom hem is a little lumpy, as are the pockets, so hopefully I'll get round to fixing these at some point!

And on that note... I think this post is getting a little long so I'll end this here. You'll have to wait till my next post to read about the trousers and bow tie. Oh, the excitement!