Chanel style jacket tutorial - Introduction

As promised (a while ago) I took step by step photos of my making the Chanel style jacket and I'm putting them together into a tutorial which should hopefully update weekly, but to begin with I thought I'd show you the finished object, and share some thoughts on patterns and fabric.
It has taken a while, because I wanted to complete the tutorial before I started posting it, I am very guilty of starting things then other things come up and get in the way and I didn't want to leave people hanging with a half made jacket!!
With the posts all written I can schedule the tutorials so I can guarantee that they will go up on time! the order will be:
1 – cutting out and quilting 8th Feb
2 – Construction 15th Feb
3 – Buttons 22nd Feb
4 – Buttonholes 29th Feb
5 – hems and finishing 7th March

 I made the jacket for my partner's Aunt's wedding. I had bought the fabric from The Fabric House in Soho ages ago with the intention of making a Chanel style jacket, but had never got round to it. The wedding seemed like a perfect excuse.

 In these tutorials I am guided by and indebted to Claire B Shaeffer's Couture Sewing Techniques, an essential book for anyone who wants to make really well finished clothes, and Susan Khalje's article "Inside a Chanel Jacket" from Threads Magazine. These two guides compliment each other and don't always agree, so sometimes you have to decide which technique is going to work best with what you are doing. Although I am, as Newton said, standing on the shoulder of giants, I think my guide adds to the two above in that it's fairly step by step with detailed photographs.

Anyway, here's what I ended up with

That's me with my partner James, as his Grandad had died a few years ago he was the most senior male in the family so he had the honour of giving away the bride.

Here's what I began with

Although the traditional fabric for a Chanel jacket is a wool bouclé, this is silk. But as soon as I saw it I loved it. At £25 per metre it is the most expensive fabric I have ever used on myself. I have cut the jacket on the cross grain, the stripes are meant to be horizontal. The only reason for this is that I preferred it that way. 

There are lots of Chanel-like jacket patterns on the market. Generally speaking for a traditional Chanel cardigan shaped jacket you want a boxy jacket without a collar or lapel, with a round neck and cut to the waist. For ease of construction (you will see why in later) you want to avoid anything with darts. If you have a boyish figure then you could get away with no bust shaping at all, the jacket is meant to be loose and casual. But if you err on the side of matronly (as I do) you are going to need some form of shaping. The pattern I ended up using was a Burda one from Burda magazine (February 2010) which did have bust to waist darts, it was easy to turn these into shoulder to waist princess seams.
Other materials needed were braid about 5m brass rings, metal buttons, a chain and lining. I used John Lewis static free lining, and I got my chain from a hardware store!
The first thing I did was to make a toile, a practise garment out of muslin. I nearly always do this when I adjust a pattern, but given you will be probably using some pricey fabric, it's wise to anyway. It is also useful for working out how much fabric and braid you will need. This will obviously depend on the patten you use, whether you want pockets, etc.
Next week I'll explain the cutting out of the fabric and the all important quilting process.