Lately I’ve been re-working woolen clothes – both my own old ones and new thrift shop scores. Or rather, I have an overflowing box of items I intend to re-work, but have only managed to completely finish a few lately. I found this jacket or blazer in early January and it perfectly matches a scarf* I made a few years ago. And yes, I previously raged against pink a little when it falls under a raspberry or pepto influence, but I love this dirty old lavender-ish rose.
The jacket had some issues though – the plastic buttons looked wrong and cheap and were probably a replacement, there was a large hole in the bottom hem, the sleeves were hack-hemmed way too short, and at first I liked the little brown triangles at the pockets because I thought they were suede and I like mixing browns and greys thank you very much, but on closer inspection they turned out to be Ultrasuede or other sort of microfiber… ick. And then the label puzzled me as well:
It looks like an older style, but the little content tag underneath it looks more recent, but the sizing is oldschool too – says it’s a 14, but fits more like a 4 or 6 – or is it foreign? I can’t find anything online about Ms. Alice Carol except a few other pieces [mis-dated in my opinion] on Etsy, so my best guess is that it’s from the late 1970s…? I also feel that it was sufficiently altered from its original state so I could continue to monkey around with it. It doesn’t look like I did much now, but I:
let out the cuffs to the bitter end removed the sleeve buttons stitched up the side wrist gap re-hemmed the cuffs re-attached the sleeve lining repaired the hole on the bottom took off the Ultrasuede triangles cut new grey wool triangles but then didn’t like they way they looked and didn’t feel like sewing them on then made and attached my own covered buttons** out of a pair of my brother’s old grey wool pants of about the same age that match the grey stripe that you really don’t see in the pictures [did you get that in one breath?]
Much better.
* For those who are savvy or nebbie, you could find this scarf pattern for free on ravelry, but I’m in the middle of re-writing and charting it and hope to re-post it soon as a buy-it pattern (never mind that only very few have made it for free so far) but one can hope [or have the right to have delusions] right?
** Oh how I love you, DIY button blanks – why were you waiting so long to come into my life? Will I ever tire of you? But have you been in my life long enough to know that you’ll hold up through many unbuttonings and buttonings and banging into things?
ASTITCHMATISM 