In this post, I’m showing you a jacket I sewed for myself using a beautiful African fabric I’d bought in Lomé (Togo).
Back in October 2015, whilst I was Head of the Department for Cooperation with Sub-Saharan Africa at the AECID, I attended some international meetings in Lomé.
I was captivated by the beauty of the fabrics the African delegates used to make their stunning outfits, almost always with a matching headdress.
I made the most of the morning of my last day, before returning to Spain, to visit a fabric market and buy two pieces of fabric.
With the first piece of fabric I bought in Lomé, I made myself a blue jacket.
I’ll digress briefly to give you some background. In 2010, my beloved Aunt Ma (the same one who had given me my sewing kit and my sewing machine) and I had spent an intensive week taking sewing lessons in the beautiful house built by my maternal grandfather, Eduardo Ferrán (whom we called ‘babi’, from the Catalan ‘avi’, meaning grandfather), when he emigrated from Catalonia to Salamanca in the midst of the Civil War; part of the building is now the Hotel Rector and the other part is my aunts’ house.
During that intense and beautiful week, Aunt Ma taught me how to trace patterns; how to cut fabric; how to sew a suit jacket; and how to line it.
So, in December 2015, I made the most of my first holiday after returning from Lomé to apply what I’d learnt in 2010 to one of the beautiful fabrics I’d bought in Africa.
I began by tracing the pattern from a jacket made by a women’s co-operative and sold in the gift shop at the Africa Museum in Johannesburg (South Africa). Although the jacket was extremely expensive, I thought it was absolutely beautiful, and I treated myself to it during my leisure trip (this time completely unrelated to work) to South Africa in December 2008.
Below, I’ve uploaded some photos of the South African jacket that I used as a basis for drafting the pattern for the jacket I sewed for myself using the African fabric from Lomé.
This South African jacket is still one of my favourites. I bought it in 2008 and I still wear it today:
Returning to the story of making the blue jacket, once I’d drawn up the pattern, I cut out the fabric and sewed first the jacket and then the lining, separately:
I then joined them together – that is, I sewed the lining and the jacket together, machine-sewing the cuff area on the inside and the side of the jacket on the inside; then I turned it inside out and finished by hand-sewing the bottom of the lining at the back.
Here’s the result!
It’s a jacket I absolutely love and have worn a lot, both in my day-to-day work at the Ministry and at work meetings.
The second photo I’m posting here was taken at the entrance to the AECID in April 2018, together with the entire development cooperation team from the General State Administration (AGE), following the meeting of the Interministerial Commission for Development Cooperation (CICI), of which I was Secretary, and where we approved the 5th Master Plan for Spanish Cooperation 2018–2024.
And since I’ve retired, I’ve continued to wear it for family events, such as one of my brothers’ weddings (Japi and Angie’s wedding). My daughter Ainoa and I took this photo just as we were leaving the house, in El Retiro, before heading to the wedding.
Finally, in Lomé I bought a second piece of fabric that I also wanted to turn into a dress, but I never got round to it… because I fell ill in Tunisia and wasn’t up to any sewing. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to use the sewing machine since then either. This post is therefore the last in which I’ll be sharing a garment I’ve sewn myself. A chapter of my life has come to a close… It’s a real shame, but there’s no choice but to accept life as it comes!
With that second piece of fabric bought in Lomé, Kauther Jalloul—a wonderful dressmaker from Tunisia and sister of my friend Isam Jalloul (next to me in the last photo I’m posting in this entry)—sewed me another beautiful jacket suit. This time there was enough fabric to make the whole jacket suit, in two pieces—well, strictly speaking, three, because she even sewed me a waistcoat… Thank you, Kauther, for such a masterpiece!
