Copper Half Sleeve Jacket Test...

I was going to cheat again and use one of the coat patterns that I already have, but I wanted to extend the side back panel inward more, to allude to the gargoyle wings outside of Notre Dame, so I just decided to do it for real (i.e. tape lines representing seams on my dress form and pinning and cutting fabric to match the pieces, then transferring it to paper).

After I did this (surprisingly, it didn't take long), I cut out the pieces on some stashed black lining fabric that I've had for a while.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine came up to me and asked if I would be able to make a few costumes for the summer musical that's put on in my town. I usually participate in the musical, but with my summer classes and this massive project, I had no time. I agreed to a few small costumes, which shouldn't take too much time away from my project. Anyways, what they needed was a long jacket for a magician character. The black fabric I had was perfect for it, and I had some purple satin left over from a dress I made last year for accents (the color theme for the show is dark purple and rust). The character is meant to be a bad magician, so when it came time to put on the buttons I figured it wouldn't matter so much that I didn't have five that matched...

For a pattern test garment, I think it's pretty good. The insides aren't finished, since it's just meant for the stage, but I made sure to make it as well as I could anyways. The pattern, sadly, didn't work out as well as I was hoping it would. My dress form doesn't have nearly as long of a torso as I do, so when I tried on the jacket, it looked like it was meant for someone shorter (luckily the actress playing the part is shorter than me). I added an inch and a half to the waistline of the pattern, and am planning to try again soon (I'm definitely making another test jacket before I cut into that perfect fabric--it was on clearance, and it was the last bolt!).

I really like how well the back turned out. There's a small amount of strange puckering, but that shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Since I'm having such issues with this princess cut pattern, I think I'm just going to throw away the pattern I made for the dress the other day and start afresh. I really want these things to fit perfectly!