Stuck (on) Zippers

My blue jacket is still not finished. I have a bad case of zipper indecision. I ordered a 2 way, #5, bottom separating zipper from Stans Sewing Supplies (along with a dozen bottom separating invisible zippers). But when it came, it was too heavy for the jacket fabric. So I order a YKK Formal Fashions separating zipper from Zipper Store. These zippers are light weight and designed for use in wedding dresses. My local Hancock’s used to stock these zippers until they went into bankruptcy and YKK refused to supply them any more (this info. came from the store manager). I am waiting for the YKK zipper to arrive. I hate to lose momentum when I am working on a garment. It is always hard to go back later, remember where I was in the process, and get started again.
Last weekend, my guys were off camping, so I was able to spend a lot of time looking through my stash of summer fabrics. I made lots of groups of coordinating fabrics. The group that inspired me the most was an expansion on the khaki and green color scheme mentioned in the last post.
I found quite a few of what I call sorbet colors, cool frosty shades of green, yellow and blue. One fabric had all the colors. It was a cotton rayon woven with muted stripe in khaki, aqua, chartreuse and pale yellow. I purchased this fabric specifically to make jacket 116 from the April 2005 of BWOF magazine The jacket was shown in a variegated green striped fabric. I loved everything about that fabric, the colors, pattern, and texture. But could never find anything close until recently. Because my fabric was very soft and raveled profusely, I backed all the garment pieces with fusible tricot. My favorite fabrics for summer jackets are silk matka, and silk or cotton blend suitings. I almost always fuse interfacing to all the garment pieces to give them some body and prevent raveling. I use fusible Armo Weft (60% poly, 40% rayon) most of the time. My choice of tricot(100%nylon) this time was based solely on coming across it first in my search for a fusible interfacing. I think I will stick with the Armo in the future. I originally hemmed the sleeves too short. When I took out the hem and attempted to press out the original hem fold, I had a heck of a time. It was like the fold was permanently formed in the tricot. Excessive use of steam and heat on the right side of the fabric got rid of the fold line, but caused the tricot to un fuse and bubble.
I did make modifications to the sleeve. The sleeve pattern was very long and flared out at the bottom edge. You can see this if you look closely at the line drawing. In the magazine picture the model has the sleeves shoved up at the elbow. I didn’t feel the extra length and flaring added to the silhouette, so I removed both. I really like the style of this jacket and will definitely make it again, maybe in the longer version. I am not sure these paler colors are good ones to wear near my face with my coloring. Especially the yellow and khaki. But aqua blue and some greens work for me. So inspired by the mini wardrobe contest going on over at PatternReview, I think I will challenge myself to make a mini wardrobe using some of the other fabrics in this group.
Thanks to Shannon and Sigrid for the link to the archived BWOF pattern magazines. It enabled me to put the picture of the line drawing and magazine photo in this post.