With the prospect of Susan Khalje visiting Australia again, I decided to try another challenging project – this outfit worn by Helena Bonham-Carter at a Berlin Film Festival.

After trawling through pinterest, here’s how Helena wore this outfit.

I love how this suit is a deconstructed, fitted suit.

I did use Vogue 8931 in 2014 and 2015 so I knew the sleeve pattern would work. 

This is the pinning needed to make sure the sleeve was positioned correctly.

PreparationDuring the 6 days couture sewing week, I prepped the jacket and skirt pattern using calico. My working was made more accurate using the Prym products to mark the seam allowances and pattern markings for this project.

The jacket fabric is made up of a Portuguese Pinstripe Stretch Suiting.

Sewing with Winter suiting during our humid Summer was a huge task but so worth doing.

Back to the jacket…

Would you believe this was my starting point for both the jacket and the skirt? 

When you think about it, the project might be daunting.

However, as you can see, Susan had pinned the jacket into the shape that I wanted and she prompted got to helping someone online, with a handy cup of tea.

This is where I got to on day 2 of the workshop.

Faux vest

These closeup photos of the jacket show a faux vest.

Here’s the toile of my version of this faux vest piece.

I had to include the faux collar on the faux vest at the top of this pattern piece.

What you see here is the prepped faux vest piece thread traced so I could have the buttonholes sewn professionally.

This is the industry button hole sewing machine used to sew most of the buttonhole. This was done on day 5 of the workshop.

What you see here is Mick sewing the bar tack end of the buttonhole on a separate industry machine. In Sydney Mick is the only person who does this work for the garment industry and he’s more than happy to do this for us locals.

When I saw these buttons on the Minerva Crafts website, I knew they would be perfect for this jacket.

I love that this button is metal and has a darkness to it. The flowers on this button gives this a bespoke feel to the jacket while still being a bit girlie.

Jacket pleats
Days 3 and 4 confounded me as I tried to get the fit of the jacket pleats accurately.

To get the pleats to sit flat, I had to thread trace the pleats and adjust them to my shape.

The pleats did need some re-work.

The collar
The other challenge was the collar.

Every seam allowance on the collar was thread traced and rechecked to the pattern.

In the end, we repined the collar and it’s less wide than the original collar in the McCalls pattern but suits my size – petite.

Below is the jacket body ready for a lot of work to apply the lining at the end of day 6.

There was still a lot of work to do and I was happy with the fit. Ecstatic.

Below is the pinning required to hand sew the lining into the jacket.

You can see the lining pleat along the centre back seam.

The sleeve of my jacket has a faux opening with the button sewn onto it.


The skirt

The skirt was made using this Portuguese self pinstripe in a navy.

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