Jacket Adventure

At the end of my reflections on Me Made May this year, I realised that one item of clothing that I wear all the time and love, is a black, Calvin Klein, jacket which my sister gave me as a hand me down. I wore it heaps in May, but almost every day through winter this year; all the time. I don't think I could love this jacket more. So what became a passing comment at the end of May, stuck in the back of my mind: could I make a copy of this jacket? 

Enter September. The weather is warming up, and I'm using my jacket less and less. To be honest, recreating it was not high on my priority list given the weather change; if I did make a second one now, I likely wouldn't even get a chance to wear it until next April at the earliest. Still, the thought of doing it niggled at me such that one night I just decided to get on with it. 

My thinking was that recreating it would take at least one, if not two draft attempts, to get the fit right, so I may as well start now. I took an evening to trace out the shapes from the original jacket. Lots of shapes. It had seams in both the front and back, as well as darts in the back. The sleeves also had strange extra seams, but I ended up not bothering with those. The original jacket is unlined, but with facings, cuffs and welt pockets at the front, and an extra fake pocket flap on one side too. 

I went through my storage tubs looking for what would need to be a substantial amount of fabric to make an entire draft jacket with and stumbled across this wrap skirt. It was 100% cotton, but also quite heavy, I guess similar to what you'd want in a jacket. I thought it had come from my friend Megan down the road, but she can't remember it. Makes me think it might have come from Carrie, which means it's been in the stash for at least 12 years. Time to do something with it. 

I unpicked the waist band and lay it out with all my pieces. It looked like I would get most of the jacket out of the skirt, but I realised I needed to unpick the trim on the bottom edge to get the facings out of it too. An hour or so of unpicking later and we were ready to cut! 

Putting this together was mostly me making it up - I mean, in some ways, it's straight forward; darts, seams, sleeves, side seams, facings. But on the other hand: cuffs? Lining? Pockets? A second time round, I would absolutely do some things in a different order. It didn't help that after the first time I put it on and found it was fitting really well. 

Given that I didn't actually need to adjust anything major (just cut a bit off the shoulder seam at the armhole), I decided I may as well make this jacket a wearable toile. And then I figured I may as well attempt to line the whole thing too. Pro tip - adding lining to already stitched on facings is not the way to go. 

Mostly done, just going to add lining and buttons now.

Back to the box for lining fabric, I found this blue stripe which I had nearly enough of, and then added the remains of a Lorraine Lea pillowcase for the sleeves. 

Since you can't see the sleeves at all, it's almost like it's all the same lining fabric. 

The cuffs on the sleeves were the trickiest part. (You can see me contemplating different cuff length options in the photo above where I'm wearing it. The verdict from my sisters was the non-watch arm length.) I wear the original black jacket with sleeves rolled up all the time. 

Since I never roll them down, I wasn't going to bother make a replica with long sleeves, which to me translated to a total waste of extra fabric. But then I wasn't sure how long to make the sleeves, or how to do cuffs, or if I should make them able to roll in case I thought they were too long. In the end, I'm happy with the cuff length, but I did face the inside of the sleeve lining with another strip of the outer fabric so that if I want to, I can roll it up. 

I watched a tutorial or two on YouTube to get an idea of how to do the welt pocket with a flap. I've done welt pockets before, but you have to cut into the actual fabric, so it's not something you want to accidently get wrong. 

A couple of finishing things - loop at the neckline to be able to hang the jacket off and lastly, the tag from the original skirt, stitched into the lining on the inside. Just for a little bit of history. I only had two black buttons that would have been the right size, but mum had three lighter coloured ones, and Fiona advised to go with that, so I did. 

Couldn't be happier with the finished trial jacket. I actually love that it's got a print, even though I feel that's not usual in a jacket. I'll definitely be keeping this to try out in May next year and I'm excited to make another with some more serious jacket fabric.