The Instagram challenge of #Magamsewalong for March is “Mad March” and my annual theme is “stashbusting” so I had this in mind when I chose the fabric for this make, as I consider this fabric rather mad, and I was mad about it when I bought it.

I have had a piece of fabric in my stash for a little while which I bought  at Woven Stories and it wasn’t even an impulse buy – I went away and thought about it. It’s a fairly unusual piece of fabric. Cotton, embroidered and with quite big holes in it. When I was cutting it out I was mindful of pattern matching and I tried to not have any holes hitting at the seamlines, but this proved to be impossible. It also didn’t seem to matter.

I chose the Lotta Jansdotter Pilvi Jacket from “Everyday Style”. I’ve made it before and loved the fit. I did add a couple of darts at the front neck to straighten out the fronts of the jacket at Sarah’s suggestion. These worked brilliantly and I’m going to do it for all future versions of this jacket.

I decided to bind all the seams with bias binding. The fabric frayed rather rabidly so I bound each raw edge before I sewed the seams. This was a much quicker way of doing things. I bound the raglan sleeve armholes and joined them and then was able to bind the full length of the sleeve and the bodice. I found the bias binding in my stash and was thrilled with the nearly perfect match.

During the cutting out I had to make sure that I maximised that pretty edging on the bottom of the body and the sleeves. This was slightly tricky as I couldn’t quite work out the length of the sleeves; I knew they must not be too long and as it happens they turned out a bit short. I’m telling myself that they are an elegant bracelet length, so quite deliberate!

I don’t appear to have a lot of coordinating clothes, so this jacket has created a bit of a hole in my wardrobe. I have enough fabric left over to make a skirt. I chose not to line the jacket but I have dyed some white cotton lawn with coffee to make the skirt lining. I’m hoping I have enough of that left over to make a simple camisole or cotton t-shirt.

There are several challenges going on over on Instagram at the moment, into which I intend to enter this jacket. One of them is #so50visible where makers of any age are challenged to  make a pattern that is being modelled by a mature model. This is an attempt to show pattern companies that older women are market leaders and disrupters, creating new markets and value networks, which it is hoped will eventually displace the established practice of using young models who tend to conform to a particular stereotype.  My jacket is modelled in the book “Everyday Style” by the timelessly elegant Gun, who was eight six when the photo was taken. I think she qualifies as a mature model!

There is also the “pose like the pattern model” hashtag, so I’ve tried to replicate the setting of the photo in the book – substituting a pot of succulents (given to me by Tom and Bridgette) for the flowers, and bliss balls (made by Mark and which he calls “stress balls”) for the cake. I think the only bit I got right is the pretty cup and saucer and cloth!

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that this jacket was made as part of the #Magamsewalong Mad March challenge. There has been a change in the management of this wonderful challenge. which was conceived and run by Sarah Liz, for several years, but who found that she has too many other demands on her time and was therefore  happy to hand over to the #sewingsansfrontieres crew of Hélène, Suzy and myself. We are aiming to honour the integrity of this particular challenge, keeping it relaxed, fun, and socially inclusive. Each participant can set their own annual theme, but we will be setting monthly themes, which makers can follow or not, depending on what they are planning to make. Anyone who wishes to join in just needs to tag their make with #magamsewalong and everyone can see their makes. It’s that easy!