Finally! After having "drafter's block" in March, I'm back to sewing and patternmaking! As I explained in my post from last sunday, I just felt the need to go in a different direction for the moment. The design I've been working on is one of the sketches in sunday's post, but I went and made a more precise sketch to help with drafting:

I bought some wonderful fabrics on Wednesday, one of them for this jacket, a grey wool felt. But I'm not going to cut into that (59 swiss francs per meter!) until I'm completely sure of the fit. Also, I'd like to use real leather for the harness-overlay and part of the peplum, so yes, everything needs to be perfect before I cut the real fabrics! So I bought some pleather and a polyester woll imitation that is very similar in thickness and drape to my actual fabric! couldn't have asked for more! And it was on sale too :)

I did make a muslin-muslin to start though:

And in the back I wanted a slightly open, inverted pleat (to accentuate the shoulder blades, and for ease of movement), so I draped it using my wearable-muslin fabric.

This is the first time I've really used draping to create a garment. I wish I had a nicer dressform, but this works ok. 

Well, I spent a few hours sewing today, and it's looking good! I need to take the princess seam in a bit, but other than that I'm so happy with how this is turning out! Seriously, I haven't been this excited about something I'm making in a long time. Maybe because I wasn't sure if I could do it? Or because it has many details that show, compared to simple garments I make, where you can only see the hard work when you look very closely?

Next up: the peplum!