Black Boucle Clef Coat

This is  the Love Notions Clef Coat (more of a jacket IMHO) in a black wool mix boucle. The fabric was purchased back when I wore suits and separates to the office, but worked quite well in this more casual style.

This has a funnel neck, rather than a fitted collar. I generally prefer it worn open.

It's a fairly simple sew, though I've made a few small changes.

I rotated the pocket piece when I cut it out so that the enclosed area is slightly larger and can hold something like a phone whilst still being OK for putting your hands in.

I positioned the pocket piece slightly higher up to avoid it being too near the hem..

I've drawn the hem onto my pattern pieces as my printout didn't have the hem marked (maybe I turned too many layers off). I've put elastic into the wrists, but not yet into the main hem. I may go back and add this in later.

I couldn't find any indication of where the buttons should go, so made up my own spacing. I interfaced the front bands but nothing else.

Clef Jacket from Love Notions

I decided to test out the Clef jacket from Love Notions patterns. 

I used some fabric I find a bit itchy and some buttons which are a bit orange as I plan to donate the end result.

The overall fit was fine though I shortened the sleeves .

For my next version I'm going to rotate the pockets 90 degrees so they are deeper. Add a high round back alteration, and straighten the ends of the sleeves for easier hemming.

I'm hoping this will be a good way to make a fleece jacket when I can't easily get a matching zip but have matching buttons!

This has used another 2m of fabric so

Fabric sewn so far in 2025 - 13m, fabric purchased zero!

• 3m of teal jersey
• 2m of print/brown sweater knit
• 3m of animal print jersey
• 3m of brown poly knit
• 2m of itchy brown fabric

Love Notions Rhapsody Blouse

The Love Notions Rhapsody Blouse is a very popular pattern, and I picked it up recently on their Friday $5 special offer.

I printed out the size XL which matched my bust/high bust measurement. I used the layers feature to turn off all the other sizes, also turned off Letter and had the A4 page marking. When printing in A4 its not truly trimless, but not a lot needs removing on each page.

I made the view with 3/4 sleeves with cuff and kept the 'strings' on the neckline.

I used a very fine cotton lawn which the sewing machine didn't want to sew. I need to get some sharp/Microtex needles, but until then I used tissue paper and spray starch to tame it which improved thing a lot.

I struggled making the bias tape, but this was before I'd got going with the spray starch so I'll try to remember that for next time.

The instructions in the pattern are good and very thorough though I also watched videos on You Tube.

Other than working with the fabric, my only other issue was that the cuff didn't fit onto the sleeve as per the diagram. I thought that this was because the pattern pieces for XL didn't match up, however it turns out I was confusing the 3/4 length Bishop Sleeve with the 3/4 length sleeve, so my error. (The cuff prints out with the Front body piece, so is a bonus you don't need for the bishop sleeve).

As I'd already cut the cuffs out, I altered construction, ran a basting thread around the bottom of the sleeve and eased it to fit the cuff which I folded over and topstitched rather than folding up.

I have a couple of queries on the style. 

First of all I'm not a strings person and I don't know what to do with them when I wear this blouse - loose knot, flying free, twee bow? - so I think for future versions I'd skip that and have the view with the neat neck.

The other style query is that the shoulders are quite set in (more apparent on some of the tester blouses than others) and I'm not sure if this works with my shoulders, the shoulders feel too narrow and my shoulder is sitting in the top of the sleeve instead. 

What do you think?

Updated to add, I didn't like the way the sleeves were hanging so I unpicked them, recut them with a really tall sleeve cap and reinserted them.

I've not re done the overlocking yet....