Retreat Sewing - Burda 6773 Jacket

In mid August I was lucky enough to get  away from home and work for a 3 day sewing retreat.  It was hosted by the Northern VA ASG group and was in  Leesburg, VA, a small town that has grown into a commuter suburb for Washington, DC. The retreat was in the humongous National Conference Center, the old Xerox corporate  training center. It had excellent rooms for sewing, big and brightly lit and a nice on site restaurant with reasonable prices.    My friend P and I took the scenic route to get there. Through the countryside, past little towns with weird names like Bumpass, Cuckoo, and Mineral.

 Just so we could stop in another little town and visit  Exquisite Fabrics.

This  high end fabric store was located in the Washington, DC neighborhood of Georgetown  until 2012, when the building it was in underwent renovations and the owners decided to retire.  They were originally planning to retire to Leesburg, but it was no longer a small town so they moved further out to Culpeper.  Culpeper was incorporated pre civil war, surveyed by George Washington,  and is the birthplace of a key figure in the civil war. I'll let you guess for which side.  The downtown is charming, and has many small restaurants and businesses including Exquisite Fabrics and a Bernina Dealer.  Above is a picture of the outside of the store. There was a guy in a red shirt that stopped short in the doorway and would not move. He acted like he was about to enter an alien and scary place.  I had to politely say "excuse me" to get by him. The store is small, and  packed with fabrics. Sorry, the clerk would not permit me to take a picture of the inside of the store. The fabrics were  high quality and high priced, though many were 25-30% off when we were there. A few pieces came home with me.  I  wonder how they could stay in business in such a rural location. They do have a website and online store.

One of the items that I sewed during the retreat was a jacket, using Burda 6773, an envelope pattern.

Burda 6773 pattern

The pattern description is "Sleeveless dress and matching jacket, inviting you to mix and match at will colors, patterns and weaves – generating exciting contrasts. Short jacket A or lengthened variant B with stitched-in hem band.

I liked the fact that the jacket had no collar, no closures and an interesting looking angular hem line.

The "stitched in hem band" is a fairly wide lined panel that is sewn on to the bottom of the short bolero jacket, which is unlined. Only half of the panel shows below the jacket and the instruction have you attaching  it to the top part with one line of top stitching on the bottom edge of the jacket.  This leaves  about half of the panel width  flapping unattached above the top stitching.  I did some hand sewing to attach it to the jacket body.

Burda 6773 Jacket Front

 

 

 

 

Burda 6773 Jacket Back

 



Burda 6773 Jacket Inside

My fabric was a poly/rayon/cotton loosely woven blend. I interfaced the body and sleeve with iron in  interfacing.  And I lined the upper part of the jacket. It was easy and quick jacket to  sew. Though my workplace is very casual now, I still wear jackets to keep warm in overly air-conditioned rooms. But I wear them with jeans or twill pants. Here I played around with white jeans and gray twill pants

 

The Labor Day picnic is about to start. The coleslaw, macaroni salad and iced brownies are ready to go.  We are waiting on the arrival of the "grill master" to start the cooking of the sausages and hamburgers. Public school starts tomorrow. Mental note -  leave for work early to avoid slow moving school buses and car pool moms. For those of you that had a long Holiday weekend, I hope it was fun and involved some sewing