Tamarack jacket test garment

I ran out of bias binding before I could finish the sleeve hems and side seams

I've been wanting a quilted jacket for some time now, and nearly bought one last year while on a family getaway in Martinborough. I didn't though, because the boy thought it was a "granny" style. I suspect he meant "Chinese granny", as this style does have a bit of the Mao jacket look about it.

That is probably why, when I decided to make the Tamarack jacket, I didn't choose an indigo blue fabric.

Please excuse the inclusion of my faux-woolly blue polka dot socks

The above is the test garment (but there is the possibility that I won't get around to making the "real" garment for a long time - that quilting takes so long and so much chalking).

I used just two fabrics rather than the standard two fabric layers plus an insulation layer. The facing layer is a cotton poplin quilting fabric that was on sale at my local sewing, quilting and knitting shop. It's got variable brown polka dots on a black background and makes me think of a crowd of planets.

The backing layer is actually from the boy's old grey sweatshirt which I had originally intended to use to make a sweater dress. Using this meant that I didnt have quite enough meterage to make the jacket or sleeves quite as long as I wanted - but actually the length is fine on me (high- to mid- hip length). The sleeves are definitely a bit short though, and I'm considering adding some "cuffs" to lengthen them.

Fit

According to the instructions I am in between a size 10 and a size 12. The dimensions of the size 12 garment looked like it would be too wide on me, so I made a 10. Now that it's almost finished (I ran out of bias binding so didn't get the sleeves finished just yet), width-wise there is plenty of room around the torso but not a lot of ease around the armcye.

So for my next version I may try either going up to size 12, or doing a 12 around the armcye and a 10 everywhere else.  

2 Possible user errors

I had never attempted a welt pocket before but was confident the instructions would be so good that I wouldn't need to do a practice on on scrap fabric. My first pocket was a disaster - the slash I made was about one inch wider - on each side - than the welt! I then re-measured the marking on the pattern versus the marking I'd made on the jacket but they match, so I don't know what happened there. For the second pocket I did not sew the rectangle according to the markings but instead based it on the width of the welt. This worked and the resulting welt pocket is something I'm not at all embarrassed for people to see.

The sleeve was also somehow much wider than the jacket armcye, so I just made sure the top of the sleeve lined up with the shoulder seam and trimmed off the excess at either side. This might be why the finished jacket was relatively tight around there, so maybe I traced the wrong lines in that area (on front and back pieces)!

Anyway, once I have finished binding the sleeves and washed all of the chalk lines off it (and sewn in some hook and eye closures) I will be happy to wear it around, outside the house even.

Op shopping win!

This isn't me or my jeans - but I think it illustrates nicely what my usual dressing room experience is...

Coinciding with my extreme moulting has been a slight size reduction body-wise. It's a bit disconcerting (but still welcome) when I lose weight and don't know why.

So now very few of my jeans fit me, unless I am doing the boyfriend look (ie. looking like I am wearing the jeans of a boyfriend who is a 5 foot tall wrestler).

So on Monday when I had a day off I decided to go secondhand jeans shopping. I would limit myself to no- or low-lycra denims because once that lycra stretches out the jeans look rubbish.

At the very first op shop I visited I found three - yes three - pairs of designer jeans in my (now smaller) size and in great condition! I had one pair each of Ashley Fogel (a NZ company, now defunct), Mavi and Workshop jeans for the princely sum of $35! Sure, two of them are bootleg styles, but that should be easy to alter into straight legs.

I now have jeans ranging from size 10 to what would probably be size 14 (the latter being pairs I made myself during a fatter time) and I have realised that I should really keep the jeans that don't fit me because in 6 months' time they might fit me again.

From edgy to Dixie

Yesterday I started wearing my wig at work again. I take off as soon as I get home - although to start with it felt like putting on an old shoe (ie fairly comfy), as the day wears on it starts to really bug me where the ear tabs hit the top of my ears. (On one side, anyway. It must be true that one of my ears is higher up than the other...)

It's a nice wig style (a dark brown with red highlights version of this) I have, but definitely a bit on the bouffant side, no? It's probably due to the need to hide the construction bits of the wig that it is so bouffy, but I do wonder whether this amount of volume is a hangover from the Southern belle look?

I started swimming again a few weeks ago, and now I am going to start swimming with a cap on. I tried one of those latex ones in a shop yesterday, and after I took it off I probably spent 10 dodgy minutes trying to remove all the stray hairs off it. Awkward!

And what am I going to wear to my Taiko drumming lesson? A wig? A beanie? Or go head-commando?

Anyway unless there's a sudden reversal of folliculer fortune I aim to buy one of those hand-tied wigs to replace this one. This type of construction is supposed to produce a more natural look, but costs an unnatural amount of money compared to what I've already got (not that that was cheap!).

I'm thinking this one, this one or this one. Though if I want to get the government subsidy to help with the cost of it I will have to wait until July (12 months after my last subsidised wig purchase).

It's raining hair. Again.

In the past week or so I've gone from no noticeable hair loss, to seeing the odd hair slipping off my head onto whatever surface, to experiencing a worrying amount of hair loss.

So what do I mean by a "worrying amount"? If I stand over the washbasin and rub my scalp as though proactively shedding all available dandruff , there're enough short hairs collecting on the bottom of the basin to plush up your average-sized mouse pad. It definitely looks like more than about 80 hairs per day to me (supposedly a normal hair-shed).

I keep asking the boy and TLM to check the top and back of my head and they've promised to let me know if they spot any scalp show-through. The boy said that I always shed hair at this time of year. But I'm pretty sure he's only told me that once before - 13 months ago just before it all fell out.

Once I got to work I checked in the mirror and was concerned that up top was already looking alarmingly flat. Hours later I remembered I'd worn a beanie on my way to work - and even very short hair can be subject to hat hair. Although... there's definitely more scalp on show at my left temple than there was a few weeks ago.