My Japanese Jacket

 

In my last post I had said I didn’t like the cardigan with jeans. I didn’t mention that I had donned it to wear to a Superbowl party, but having changed my mind, I now had to find a different top or bottom. In the course of trying different things, I popped on this jacket to show my husband as he hadn’t seen it on me and he said I should wear it and no, I wasn’t going to be cold. 

 

I call it my Japanese jacket as the designer is Japanese and the pattern is written in the Japanese style. Once I realized that the numbers were for the entire back of the garment but the schematic was just half the back I was good to go. The garment is knit sideways in three pieces – back and two fronts. Except I worked the back in two pieces as I wanted each piece to be the same. After the cuff stitches are increased for the sleeve shaping and stitches cast on for the body. If I had worked the back in one piece I would have been binding off and decreasing stitches on the second half. This did mean I had a centre back seam to sew. I decided to make this a feature of the garment and worked a 3-needle I-cord bind off. I also worked this on the top of the sleeves. The side and sleeve seams were mattress seamed. 

 

The kit (yarn and pattern) were given to me by my friend who had been given it. She also had purchased the kit a number of years previously and started hers at the same time – she just hasn’t finished it yet. The project uses two strands of Habu mohair and one strand of Habu linen paper held together. People said the linen paper softened on washing but I didn’t notice that mine did but as it is an outer layer that is not really a problem.

This was an easy project that I only worked on when I wanted something easy and sat for months waiting for the seaming to be finished. Many people added buttons but I like mine as it is. Now that I have worn it once I can see myself wearing it more frequently.