First Came the Jacket

Yes, I have a thing for jackets. I can't resist buying them for 99 cents and I can play with new techniques without having to put any work into the construction. At this price, who cares if I screw it up? This tweedy number wasn't anything special considering it was an Apt 9 brand from Kohls and originally had a detachable faux fur collar that wasn't on the jacket when I found it at thrift. The back had to be taken in as it was 18" across and my girl is 15" (including ease) so I started at the shoulders and tapered a dart into a V, creating a pleat below the waist.

Before work began I found this fantastic matching plum denim at JoAnns on clearance for $4 for the skirt and wanted to incorporate this fabric into the jacket.

I played with ways to attach it to the sleeves to make them longer (a common alteration for the long-arm people) and ended up unpicking the lining and attaching the denim to the lining so it hangs past the sleeve. It worked pretty well and added a thread chain to keep it from twisting.

I had remembered a technique from an older issue of Threads about trimming edges with narrow strips of loosely woven fabric and here I used a 1/2" bias strip and teased the edges with a brush. This worked well so I added 2 rows of strips to the sleeve edges to tie the whole thing together. Also, I added buttons to the sleeve and since they were trimmed in gold, the button on the back bow is also gold. The button on the front was a self-fabic button which I usually find attractive but in this case it was too bland so replaced it with one that provided some contrast.

Ralph Gets a 2nd Chance

I love tailored jackets but when I can buy this creme raw silk designer model for 99 cents at the thrift store it hardly seems worth my time to labor over a jacket from scratch.

This is the "before" picture after being tossed in the washer with a capful of shampoo. Yes, I know the tag said "dry clean only" but I don't like the chemicals in that process so I stick to soap and water.

The buttons are nothing special but I left them on and well, it's lacking in details. The extra watch pocket doesn't really add much. In fact all the pockets were still sewed shut so I doubt the original owner wore it much.

This is a size 6 petite and while the sleeves are way too short, the jacket body is a normal length.

I needed to add 4" to the sleeves because DD has long arms like me. I'm always buying silly doilies. I don't know why exactly because I rarely use them but the crocheted squares seemed just right. They needed to be a litte wider so I blocked them with steam before whip stitching them together. For balance, I hand stitched one to each shoulder creating the appearance of a yoke. I wanted a really soft ribbon to weave through the top edge of the crochet and found this Moda Dea ribbon yarn to be nice match.

A little hand stitching with embroidery floss around the front edge and lapel pulls it all together.