No. 3 The further Adventures of Nuno gone Shiva

Fabric purchased at Nuno in Tokyo after Shiva paint stick stenciling and ice dyeing with Procion MX.  
​The high contrast wiped out the pastel Shiva designs.  Now what?

Fabric after painting the shibori designs with dye. Yellow, turquoise and pink

​

​So, here I was with a very interesting piece of fabric but so little of it.  Only 51x28, oy veh! 
I mulled over the possibilities in my head for a while and then decided I needed to play with paper dolls again. I reduced the size of the available piece to scale, copied it multiple times to cut and paste it in a variety of ways to come up with the vest or jacket pattern that made the most sense.  



No. 1.  I tried a jacket version that would allocate a 12" wide strip cut from the short side (front edge) for trimming the top of the sleeves.  But that would require adding a contrasting band on the front edges in order to have enough to go around the body.

No. 2.  I only cut the equivalent of a 6" strip off the short side for the collar of a sleeveless vest.

I only got through those two versions, but the process did exactly what was is intended to do:
It made me play! I let go of preconceived notions and a-l-l-o-w-e-d the
intersection of previous unconnected matrices of thought. 
(That is Arthur Koestler's definition of creativity.  I remember it from 30 years ago because it applies to all areas of human endeavor, from math to music and everything in between.)
​That's when the fog lifted:  I hardly ever wear vests because, if I'm cold enough to wear a vest, my arms will be cold without sleeves.  So there!  It's gotta be a jacket.  But how? And with what?

​While playing with version No. 2, I remembered an old Vogue jacket pattern I had used before. It occurred to me that I could make the body two-sided, like a reversible vest, and still have sleeves.  They would be made from a contrasting fabric that would become the lining/reversible side of the jacket.  It is like joining a vest to a jacket!  Simple.  No problem....! Really?  
​What fabric/color to use for the jacket (which would also be the lining of the vest)?  Searching through my stash resulted in rediscovering a beautiful but somewhat loosely woven and therefore tender raw silk twill in a smashing dark indigo color.  Perfect!  It had been buried for a looong time.  Onward... time to play wit paper dolls again.

No. 1.     I tried a jacket version that would allocate a 12" wide strip cut from the short side (front edge) for trimming the top of the sleeves.  But that would require adding a contrasting band on the front edges in order to have enough to go around the body.
No. 2.     I only cut the equivalent of a 6" strip off the short side for the collar of a sleeveless vest.

I only got through those two versions, but the process did exactly what was is intended to do:
It made me play! I let go of preconceived notions and  a-l-l-o-w-e-d the 
intersection of previously unconnected matrices of thought. 
(That is Arthur Koestler's definition of creativity.  I remember it from 30 years ago because it makes sense and applies to all areas of human endeavor, from math to music and everything in between.)
​
​That's when the fog lifted:  I hardly ever wear vests because, if I'm cold enough to wear a vest, my arms will be cold without sleeves.  So there!  It's gotta be a jacket.  But how? And with what?

​While playing with version No. 2, I remembered an old Vogue jacket pattern I had used before. It occurred to me that I could make the body two-sided, like a reversible vest, and still have sleeves.  They would be made from a contrasting fabric that would become the lining of the vest and also the reversible side of the jacket.  It is like joining a vest to a jacket!  Simple.  No problem....! Really?  
​

 The idea of making a reversible jacket/vest that only had one layer of fabric for the sleeves but two layers for the body required making sleeves with finished seams on the inside as well as on the outside.  
Additionally, the cuffs were to have the shibori fabric on the outside.
​I finished the cuffs by sewing the shibori fabric to the outside of the jacket sleeves, right sides together, then turned the cuffs right sides out, clipped the seam allowances just above the cuff in order to turn the sleeve allowance the other way and to sew the seam.

This created a finished seam on the same side of the fabric as the finished cuff.

I turned the seam into a flat felled seam by doing the following: One side of the seam allowance was graded, the other side was turned under, pressed and hand sewn to the sleeve.  This allowed for a finished appearance  on both sides, 

​The rest of the blue raw silk jacket=lining (reversible side) was sewn as usual. (Yeah, except it gets confusing  as to which side of the sleeve is the outside.  So, I did manage to sew one sleeve in inside out!  Practice makes perfect.) The only thing unconventional was that the armhole seams were pressed towards the body to eventually hide them behind the turned under seam allowance of the shibori vest.  Before joining the jacket=lining and the shibori vest, the armholes of the shibori vest were stitched to reinforce them at the underarm in both directions for about 5" to safely clip the seam allowances before  pressing them under.

​The completed jacket=lining was sewn to the completed shibori vest around all the edges as usual, right sides together, leaving the armhole edges open.  The seams were graded and clipped at the corners. After the garment was turned right side out through one of the armholes and the seams were pressed, the armhole edges of the shibori vest were matched with the armhole seam of the jacket=lining, pinned and hand sewn in place.  Voilà

Center front detail

Too bad that one dark purple shibori design ended up on the underside of the lapel.  I would have loved to have that somewhere else on the front.  That's what you get when you experiment.... nice things happen in the wrong place.

​Front.  Lapel detail

Back of jacket-vest.  I call  it ANTICIPATION..... It might go with me on a far away journey.