Vermont Yellow Jacket

 Another hooded sweatshirt disguised as a jacket for fall,even though it's practically over.
I thought this would be good for walks in the fall leaves, and that reminded me how I've always hoped some day I could be in Vermont to see all the leaves change...some day.

I think I've mentioned how I don't eagerly use yellow or pink.  They're just colors I usually avoid.  I think yellow and brown were the least used crayons in my box as a kid.

But I do like to see other people who love them, like PinkSuedeShoe for pink, and Dana at made and Sutton Grace with yellow.  What's funny is at least both PinkSuedeShoe and Sutton Grace have written about avoiding red, which is probably my favorite color, so I guess we're the opposites.

If you look in my house, it's mainly blues, greens, and reds.

Anyway, I've been trying to move out of my color comfort zone and try something yellow.

Dana at made's Celebrate Yellow was going on right after I bought this bright yellow sweatshirt fleece and has tons of awesome yellow ideas.

I really liked the charcoal/ yellow combo that's popular and thought it would be good for this jacket.

First I had to tone down the fluorescent yellow by dying it with tea.

I used a pattern for double breasted coats as the base of my jacket: McCalls M5525.  I mainly used version A.  The main things I changed were the length of the arms, and the collar--adding the hood.  I also just did 3 big buttons, rather than the 2 rows of little buttons.  I wanted to look asymmetrical with just the one row of buttons.

Also, notice somehow my pockets are totally off, the left one being a lower than the right.  I should fix that.

Emphasize should but probably won't...at least for a while.

I've had this sewn for a few weeks, but the sad thing is I was so inspired by fall jackets out of sweatshirt fleece, and so made the red one, and this yellow one.

But remember I'm pregnant?  Now my baby gut is too big to wear this yellow jacket or the teal equestrian jacket I made either.  So my little sister Lynette wore it to get some pictures, and I'll pack it away for next fall when it will hopefully fit around me.  I guess it was fun to design and sew despite not being able to use for a year.

I looked for a charcoal fabric to line the hood and make the buttons for a while.  Because everything was simple and plain, I wanted the charcoal to have some geometric print.  I looked for a while and didn't find anything in stores or online, then one day I found a body-pillow case at Walmart clear back during the back-to-school-sale for $3.00  So I used a pillow case for the charcoal.  It worked out well, because there was plenty of fabric from the huge body pillow case, and it's a really soft fabric.

For the buttons, I just used those little kits you can buy to cover metal bases with fabric.  I really like having them in the matching charcoal print.

I also really liked the hood.  My red one was kind of too huge.  But this one seemed to be closer to the right size, maybe on the small side.

To cross the chin pieces of the hood, I did taper the under side down a little as you can see here when it's open.  I didn't want it to be too thick under the chin.  I kind of actually like the look with the top button open and the asymmetry of the button opposite the vertical charcoal stripe.

As always, probably the reason I've been making my own jackets in the first place is to make sleeves long enough.  And I go a little overboard on making them too long.  I made the sleeves long enough with the cuff folded back showing the charcoal.  But then you can unfold the sleeves and it's just all yellow, and they end at the base of my fingers. 

So kind of fun to venture into yellow.

What colors do you never think of using?