This one started, as have the others, with an olive-drab jacket I found at Goodwill. This is what it looks like now:
The Venezia-brand jacket was US size 15-16, with solid seam detailing and strong cotton fabric. It came with antique silvery buttons, and silver and antique copper studs on the collar and pocket covers. Venezia’s a decent brand for us plus-sized people: usually well designed and reasonably crafted.
Then came the hunt for as close to I could get to the same olive drab, in cotton broadcloth. This wasn’t easy, even in my neck of a city with some 3.4 million+ people.
Mail order was out because I wanted to hand-match the color. I didn’t want to spend too long on the quest. I didn’t want to drive too far, so I set a limit of 15 miles distance one-way.
I didn’t want to pay too much more than the jacket, so I settled on $10-$12 for two yards of 40-54″ broadcloth.
It had to be broadcloth. Linen was too expensive unless I lucked out on a linen tablecloth in olive drab. Velveteen too heavy, along with outdoor fabrics like cotton duck. Cotton broadcloth has a stiff hand that, while it can doom many unsuspecting new costumers (who expect the fluttering drape of rayon, linen, and silk), works beautifully for stiff-but-swishy ruffles and skirts.
The Goodwills were uncooperative with either linen tablecloths or nice cotton sheets or comforters.
My local SAS fabric by the pound warehouse was a bust. So was my first local quilt shop and the nearby Jo-Ann store. For reasons any longterm reader knows, I try to avoid WalM4rt and H@bbyL0bby.
But wait, a miracle happened: there’s a Mulqueen not far away! They not only had nearly the same plain olive drab broadcloth, but matching *great* thread and a Kona Fabrics quilting cotton in swirls of coffee, cream, and olive drab. For that half-rich brocade, half camouflage look I wanted for the trim. To top off good luck , they had a sale that weekend. Fabric achieved.
The ornamented skirt took up 19×120″ before I pleated it into deep ruffles, to cover about 35″ of the jacket hem. The Kona swirl cotton became the bottom edging on the skirt, the seam tape where it joins the jacket, and part of a stiff 3/4″ ruffle around the neckline.
I’m very happy with how this experiment turned out. If anyone is interested, it’s for sale here. It costs what it costs because there was a lot of sewing into that skirt and neck detail.
I admire your persistence in hunting out the right materials for the project. My mother was a wonderful dressmaker. Some of my earliest memories are of bridal dresses and bridesmaids’ dresses in progress, hanging on doorknobs around the house. I didn’t follow in her footsteps with the sewing skills, although sometimes I think it might be great fun to create things with fabric. Another friend of mine – a Quaker, who is committed to getting every last bit of wear out of a garment – “recreates” her skirts when they wear out by sewing together the good bits of one garment with the good bits of another. She uses interesting patchwork effects and hand-sewing that blends practical use with decorative effect. I think there is a proper name for the method but I’ve forgotten.