Pub­lished 02/11/2016

Shop sim­i­lar jack­ets for women here: Sus­tain­able Fash­ion for Women

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Pho­tos by Pho­tog­ra­phy by Anastassia

Have you ever found a beau­ti­ful fab­ric that was so per­fect that you were afraid to do any­thing with it? A bad design or an errant cut could ruin it for­ev­er (or so you think). This red tweed was def­i­nite­ly such a challenge.

Dur­ing a Christ­mas 2014 sale, I pur­chased an absolute­ly amaz­ing red tweed wool fab­ric and hon­ey leather but­tons from Bri­tex Fab­rics. I had my eyes on the red tweed for a very long time before I pur­chased it. The price was well over $100/yd and I wasn’t sure if the mate­r­i­al and col­ors were as vibrant as they appeared to be online. But to my sur­prise and delight, I was very impressed with both its qual­i­ty and col­ors. (Bri­tex even wrapped it up so nicely!)

I only pur­chased a yard of the tweed. I knew I want­ed to pair it with beige cash­mere and the hon­ey leather I had stashed in my clos­est. I left all the mate­ri­als in a pile on my eye-lev­el shelf for about two months for inspi­ra­tion (and to moti­vate me to fin­ish my orders so I could make the coat for myself). I had a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent design ideas, (See a few of the many design idea pho­tos I sent my fam­i­ly & friends in the slideshow below). My sis­ters could tell you how many (annoy­ing) texts and emails they received as I planned this coat’s pat­tern and design.

After much thought and feed­back from fam­i­ly, I nailed down a coat pat­tern and coat design. I ulti­mate­ly chose to make a coat from Bur­dastyle’s 3/2013 #103 shirt/blazer pat­tern. It was a shirt pat­tern, but I knew (with adjust­ments) it had the poten­tial to be an awe­some coat!

I adjust­ed the shirt pat­tern last year. I can’t recall all the adjust­ments I made, but they includ­ed: length­en­ing the jack­et, elim­i­nat­ing the high pock­ets, adding lin­ing, col­or block­ing the design, and chang­ing but­ton placement.

I didn’t start assem­bling the jack­et until ear­ly this fall. (I had the goal to fin­ish and wear the jack­et to both a NY Giants and a Ball State Car­di­nals Foot­ball game.) But unfor­tu­nate­ly after sewing the shell of the jack­et, I hat­ed the coat and found mis­takes with the pat­tern! (See pho­to below) I was tired, dis­ap­point­ed, and decid­ed it was best to put the coat aside and fin­ish it anoth­er day.

I cringed when I saw the coat hang­ing in my stu­dio. I wished I had nev­er cut the wool. I knew I owed it to myself to fin­ish it and to see how it would final­ly turn out.

It final­ly took one very crap­py week­end to force me to drop every­thing and do some­thing for myself. It wasn’t so much that I want­ed to fin­ish the jack­et for myself, but rather I want­ed to make my niece Gigi a match­ing jack­et with the left­over red tweed scraps.

I didn’t have much time, so I made Gigi’s jack­et pat­tern in min­utes and prayed that it would work and fit her. Since I had only scraps to work with, I had to go with the coat design you see in the pho­tos. (It was also impos­si­ble to match the lines on the front two pan­els.) Despite my ini­tial reser­va­tions, I LOVED Gigi’s final jack­et! After mak­ing Gigi’s jack­et, I was deter­mined to fix the mis­takes in my own.

After I fixed the sleeves of my jack­et, I sent snapchats to fam­i­ly and friends for their feed­back on the new look. I real­ly hat­ed the exposed pock­ets, but I didn’t want to spend the time adding leather welt pock­ets to a jack­et I was not very hap­py with. How­ev­er, I was con­vinced to do diag­o­nal leather welt pock­ets, (my favorite). I’m so hap­py I did! I think it real­ly changed the design of the coat, as well as my atti­tude towards it.

After the pock­ets it was easy sail­ing. As the coat slow­ly came to a fin­ish, I was very pleased. The design I envi­sioned final­ly came together!

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Mommy and Me Matching Cashmere Jackets

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS:

~Based off Bur­dastyle 3/2013 Pattern

~ Out­er Mate­ri­als: Red Wool Tweed, Beige Cash­mere, Hon­ey Gen­uine Leather, Hon­ey Leather Buttons

~Inter­faced Beige Cash­mere with Fusible Inter­fac­ing, Hand Pad-stitched Horse­hair Can­vas to Tweed Material

~Inner Mate­ri­als: Navy Quilt­ed & Padded Lin­ing & Black Poly­ester Lining

The coat is real­ly warm and quite heavy.

WORK IN PROGRESS PHOTOS AND SNAPCHATS SENT TO FAMILY & FRIENDS