Butterick 5223 in Denim

Wow...this jacket went together a lot faster than I expected. Believe it or not, I made one test buttonhole on a scrap of fabric. Then I proceeded to sew the 3 buttonholes. Perfect! That gives you an idea of how wonderful this denim fabric was to sew. SusieQ has been wearing it for the last few days until I had the time to sew the buttons on. So, tonight looks like the night to do some hand sewing.


This is my 4th jacket from this pattern. This time, I decided not to topstitch the pleats down. I did baste them to hold the pleats in place while I sewed in the facings. Afterwards, I removed the basting stitches. As you can see in the pictures (front and back), the pleats look softer.


Here's a close up of the denim dot fabric and the front pleats. I have to mention that this fabric was a fabulous find at Joann's. It's a lightweight denim that my sewing machine handled without any difficulty. I love that the white dots are part of the fabric weave. The fabric drapes beautifully and is perfect for this type of jacket pattern.

So, you are probably wondering what is the color of this denim fabric I used. The real color is shown in the pictures with the pleats. To give you an idea of the color...I ended up using Mettler Metrosene color #558 poly thread. Using a black would have been too dark and a thread with blue in it would have been way off. In essence, the top picture is not the true color (still learning to use my camera).


Since I will be wearing this jacket with jeans and casual pants, I decided not to take in the sides.

I'll be back to post another picture of this jacket with the buttons sewn.