A Comeback for a Jacket and a Blog

Yes it's been a while.......I could write volumes on why nothing has happened on this blog for two plus years, but life has not been boring and I have achieved quite a bit on the creative front. There is no use in trying to play catch up on the blog, so I might as well just move on from this moment.

My post relating to double trouble with linen jackets here has come back to haunt me. As I mentioned in that post, not only is a white jacket one of the most impractical garments to wear, but in my case as the years have marched on, the starkness of the white against my grey hair and pale skin resulted in me looking more washed out than anything else. So as Carolyn, whom I have referred to in previous posts, was the catalyst in steering me towards a dye bath, this is the tale of a jacket reborn:

This more than a pale blue colour is far more suitable. If changing the colour of the jacket had been my only effort in revamping this hand-tailored garment, I could have hung it back in my closest on the same day of being baptized in a blue dye bath. But heck no.......look at the bottom left-hand photo. Imagine my surprise when I saw these marks on the edges of both sleeves and on the front princess seam line. I was quite taken aback and had to dig deep in the memory banks to think how and why this could have happened as there were no marks on the jacket before plunging into the dye bath. Well I could vaguely remember dabbing a diluted solution of bleach on the edges of the cuffs to try to whiten the edges that had discoloured from wearing my jacket behind a desk on a few occasions. Either a drop of the bleach solution had dropped on the front of the jacket in the process or I had tried to eradicate another mark. So these "treated"spots took to the dye with more fervour than the rest of the garment. My initial knee jerk reaction was to toss the jacket as I was so disappointed, but then I started thinking of solutions......

I had to get into the inner workings of the jacket, so unpicked the lining at the bottom edge where I had closed it up. By raising the seam edge of the sleeves and  deepening the front princess seam lines on both sides by about 1 cm, I managed to encase the blotched areas within the seams. And bonus, the jacket fits better than before around the bust.

I have mentioned before I am a diehard....sometimes it doesn't pay off but when it does pay off I am so very proud of myself.