Plaid - Burda Jacket 9 2014 127

 If you follow fashion, you may know that plaid is "in" again.

Left over from the last time plaid was popular, this project jumped to the front of the sewing project queue.

Burda Plaid Jacket 9 2014

“Lead the pack in a short plaid jacket with patent leather trim. It’s a fun and feminine alternative to blousy bomber jackets. Material Recommendations - Jacket fabrics with some body of wool or blends. Imitation patent leather as contrasting fabric. The edges of the fabric are not finished, so only non-fraying fabrics should be used.”

That last piece of information…edges of fabric are not finished was found on the BurdaStyle Website description.  It was also buried deep in the  magazine instructions,  which I discovered when I read “put facing and jacket front together wrong sides facing, sew along edge, trim off seam allowances” I thought “what the ??”  The pockets were also supposed to be left unfinished on all edges, which was fine on the sides trimmed with leather but on the bias-cut hand opening… there may be no fraying, but potential stretching if the pocket was  actually used. I wasn’t ready to embrace the raw edge look, so my jacket is finished in the more traditional methods.

Fabric used was a red/black wool blend, with  lambskin patent leather for the trim. The lambskin came from Fabric Mart Fabrics long ago. All trim was attached by using a temporary fabric glue,  to avoid using pins and clips, and edge stitched along the cut edge.  I used a new 90 needle, regular polyester sewing thread and my Teflon pressure foot on the leather. Worked great.  While sewing the trim I thought of the black patent leather Mary Jane style shoes that were my childhood Sunday School shoes for many years. I also remembered we polished these shoes using Pond’s cold cream, which was a staple on my mother’s dressing table.  Isn't it  strange what we keep in the old memory banks of our brain.

Cutting out and matching the plaid took the most time.  Sewing went quickly. I did my normal high back curvature modifications and lengthen the jacket 2 inches. It’s original 20-inch length was a bit too short for me.  Weirdly, the sleeves were too long, and I had to trim off 1 inch. You may notice a piece of the leather trim on the shoulders that was not in the original design. After fighting with too much fabric in the sleeve cap, I compared my traced pattern pieces against the pattern sheets and discovered I had accidentally traced the front bodice with a smaller size shoulder.  That leather trim at the shoulder covers the gap at the shoulder seam between the front and back garment pieces.

While I was searching through my husband dresser drawers, looking for his thick socks, he asked me if I was dressing up for my pictures.  I said  "Yes. I am going for the lumberjack look because of the black and red plaid of the jacket."  He started singing "I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay"  This made me laugh as it is a Monty Python song about a lumberjack that likes to wear women's clothing. Lumberjack Song

Burda 9 2014 127   Lumberjack Look

Burda 9 2014 127 Casual Friday work look

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