If I can find a nice stripe or even a very small foulard type print for a top, it would also go nicely with this. But the main thing is that these jackets can be a mainstay in my wardrobe right now, and I've got the pattern, it's all fitted, and I'm
confident about the techniques to use - I might even do a contrasting besom pocket in the houndstooth.
I'm doing these mock-ups in my Corel program. Corel is really fabulous and remarkably affordable for a small company or individual. The Adobe counterpart costs around $2,000 the last time I priced it, and the Corel does everything the Adobe does at almost 1/4 of the price.
But you don't have to have a vector or pixel program to do this. This is from my croquis which is a tracing of the outline of your body, and some colored pencils or markers. It's not that hard to see that this jacket line on
these pants is remarkably in proportion and works. The whole idea of tracing this off your croquis is to check to see if the proportions are correct, but also drawing helps you solve many problems: where's the closure?...on the contrasting band?...off the band?...a zipper?...a hidden button placket? But you get to toss all of those around to see what is the best for this design. I picture big black buttons on this and the front folding over far enough that the buttons are
on the fabric not the black trim.
So welcome to the holiday season, when you will have more ideas than you know what to do with. Get that notebook handy and start jotting down ideas. Sometimes it's a very basic sketch. Sometimes it's a detail. Sometimes it's a word or two - striped ribbon on epaulet or something like that that kicks in your ideas. This time of season the muse loves to come visit you and the most in opportune times, so you gotta get her
ideas down fast, so we can start the first of the year off with tons of ideas.
