This weekend, I finished my Huret’s jacket, maybe. The dress she’s wearing underneath has puffy sleeves, so it looks a bit lumpy at the shoulders. Eventually, she’ll wear it with a matching (or contrasting) skirt and a non-puffy-sleeved blouse.

This is the pattern I used for the jacket. It is from Francois Theimer’s wonderful reproduction of La Poupee Modele. The original instructions call it a house shirt and recommend white wool with violet flowers and green stems and leaves.

I chose to use light BLUE wool with white embroidery.

This is a before (left) and after shot of the fabric. It is a lightweight, woven wool flannel that I washed in warm water and dried in the dryer. That compacted the fibers and almost felted the wool. I did this because I was going to pink the edges with my pinking shears and I didn’t want it it ravel. I also coffee dyed the wool to get a softer color.

Since I was going to embroider the jacket, I didn’t cut out the pattern pieces, but just marked them lightly with a regular pencil on the fabric.The fabric was so dense and I couldn’t see through it to mark the embroidery pattern, so I marked it on tissue paper which I pinned to the fabric. I embroidered through the tissue paper, then tore it away.

The 12-strand silk embroidery floss I used was made by Crescent Colours, in the color Icing. I got it at my local needlework store. I experimented with several different thicknesses, but settled on using one strand for the embroidery.

Because the wool was so sturdy, I was able to do the embroidery easily without a hoop. I was afraid that stretching the wool in a hoop would distort it.

I used a tiny embroidery needle. It is a John James Tapestry Petite in size 28. They can be purchased on Amazon.

When the embroidery was done, I pinked the front, bottom and sleeve edges. The corners end up square or odd shaped when pinking and I can live with that. But, if any of you know a way to get perfect pinked corners, please share.

I cut out the rest of the jacket on the pencil lines and sewed it with running stitches. Since the wool won’t ravel, I didn’t need to overcast my seams.

Getting the embroidered lines on the 2-part sleeves to line up was tricky, but I’m pleased with the results.

My trusty Gail Wilson Fray Preventer came in handy for finishing the cut edges of the silk fringe I used. I sewed the fringe on with off-white thread, hiding the stitches in the embroidered border.

I was very careful to make the inside look neat while I was doing the embroidery, but wonder if the jacket should be lined. What do you think?

Is this jacket finished?