Something for nothing Jalie 2795 jacket

I have just returned from Esk, where our family spent 3 days cycling the converted rail trails on mountain bikes with our local cycling group, a terrific, albiet muddy and slightly tiring trip.
 
Wait, this post does have sewing content.
On the Wednesday morning prior to this trip (leaving 8am Friday) daughter the second told me that she had outgrown her polar fleece hoodie, and in fact, had nothing warm to wear for our mini holiday. She has grown very little in the past 2 years, so I was not very impressed with the timing of this statement.
As the overnight low on Sunday was forecast 4* C,despite my inclination to sew something else for me, me, me.. I had immediate visions of a teeth chattering teenager who would rather freeze than wear an ill-fitting jacket, and  pulled out the polar fleece for my daughter. This fabric takes up an incredible amount of room in my stash, so you can imagine my shock when I discovered that, apart from some rather thin and unsuitable stuff from Spotlight earmarked long ago by daughter the first for a dressing gown, I did not have sufficient polar fleece in any colour to make an adult sized jacket.

 
Fortunately, colour blocking is not completely unfashionable at the moment, and my trusty Jalie 2795 has a lot of pieces already, so I combined 2 colours of Polartech 200 (source Seattle Fabrics) for the main sections of the jacket. I did not have enough Polartech for the (added) front facings, so used a thin Spotlight fleece remanant in another purple shade for these.
However, I found the contrast piecing visually unpleasing, although it is cut  (mostly) according to the pattern, as the underam sections do not meet the princess line seams at the armscye. I also felt that the 3 colours did not quite work together.


The jacket needed a little distraction IMO. I appliqued polar fleece flowers randomly to the body (prior to pocket construction) using the two polartech colours and the Spotlight polar fleece, with some scraps of green for leaves. This applique took only slightly longer than the entire actual construction of the garment.

(I hand basted the zipper at the seam intersections to get them to match at these points. Jalie does not mention this step, but theirs match anyway, very clever of them)
I have made this pattern several times previously, and like to approach the zipper fastening differently from the Jalie instructions.
First I like to add a facing, as, not being in Canada like Jalie, our jackets are often worn open, and the Jalie instructions leave a raw edge and the zipper tapes exposed when the jacket is worn in this manner.

To this jacket I have also added a zip guard, fluffy side out due to operator error.

I prefer an enclosed seam for the bottom band zipper attachmentl. Here I have left the inner section of the bottom band free, so that I can fold the band inside out over the end of the separating zip and sew this over the original zipper tape seam.

 (The fold is marked with a tailor tack). When this is turned right way out, and the facing catch stitched down  by hand over the free section of the inner bottom band, the inside has a clean finish in the sections that are visible when the jacket is worn open.


I did not tell my daughter that the jacket was made from remnants.

She was quite pleased with it when I handed it over, although I had to induce mild guilt to convince her to pose for photographs on a nippy evening during our holiday.  I hope she still likes it after she reads the post.