Satin Brocade Bomber Jacket

The idea for this jacket came about during the construction of my last two coats.  My Bias cut A line swing coat and my purple wonka coat I wanted those coats to be extra warm, but also have a nice smooth interior to make it easy to get on and off, so I used warm and natural batting and quilted it to some purple satin. I loved the way the quilted satin looked and decided I would love to make a whole coat with this look.  I wanted a shorter coat this time however decided on a bomber jacket style.  

Thus began my search for a bomber jacket pattern.   I thought about drafting my own, but I've been struggling a bit with how much ease to include in my coats and decided that I wanted a pattern to follow for this project.  There were two patterns that I've seen around the blogoshere lately that I've loved.  Papercut Patterns  Rigel Bomber and Waffle Patterns Zipper Blouson- Cookie.  However I am more than a little close fisted and the price on these two patterns was a bit steep for me so I went looking for something a little closer to my price range and found the BurdaStyle Plaid Bomber Jacket.  This had pretty much everything I was looking for - raglan sleeves, good collar and only $6 - so I bought the pdf version and printed it out.  

This was my first time working with a Burdastyle pdf pattern.  They don't give you much in the way of instructions, but since its a pretty easy style I wasn't too worried. It was also my first time using a pattern without seam allowances.  This is not a good thing for me as I'm too lazy to actually mark the proper seam allowances so they tend to wobble a bit as I cut them by hand.

Next up I had to figure out what size to use.  The pattern came in size 36, 38, 40 and 42. According to my measurements I'm a size 40 for high bust and above 44 for waist however after measuring the pattern and comparing it to my actual measurements I decided to cut a straight size 36 - There is a lot of ease in this pattern.  

So the next thing I had to do was decide on material - This was easy.  During one of my many trips to the discount fabric store I found on the $1.99/yard table this fantastic green satin.  It has the most beautiful lustre to it - I just had to have it.  

But I figured it might be a bit much to make the entire thing from it.....so bring on the satin brocade fabrics.  I love these types of fabrics but never get a chance to use them.  I mainly make everyday type clothes and its not really an everyday material is it?  However I figured that it would make a great feature on this jacket.  I chose a cream base colour as it was the best match for the green - plus phoenixes and dragons how can you go past that!

I originally bought enough of the green material so I could line it in the same colour, however I then went and used up a good chunk of the material during the Pattern Review Sewing Bee. About halfway through the Bias challenge in round 2 I had a crisis of confidence.  I wasn't sure that my coat was "Bias" enough to meet the challenge and so I decided I would make a satin dress instead.  Unfortunately the pattern I chose did not work well when I tried to extend it to my size and after spending a day and a half trying to make it work I gave up entirely and moved on to attempt no.3.  I spent half a day on that before once again giving up and going back to my original idea.   One day I'll go back and try and finish those two dresses....one day....

Thankfully, by cutting up the skirt of the dress I still had enough of the green fabric to make my bomber jacket.  I cut the front and sleeve pieces out of the green satin and the back piece out of the brocade fabric, then cut all pieces out of the warm and natural batting material.  Then came the tedious job of quilting the two layers together.  Every other time I've quilted something it was for a lining and if there was a few puckers here or there I wasn't really worried.  This time I was trying for perfection - I didn't achieve it of course, but I did a pretty damn good job! I then sewed all the pieces together and trimmed the batting away from the seam allowances.  I have to say that that was my least favourite job of this entire make...so tedious.

Once it was together I had to think about what I wanted to do with the inside of the jacket.  I couldn't leave it as it was with the batting showing.

After a little more thought I decided that I wanted to make the entire thing reversible.  I didn't have enough of the green left so I headed back to the store - I knew that there was another piece of the green there, but then I noticed this purple material and knew i had to go with that instead. 

I only bought 1 yard as I knew that was all I needed, however once I got my fabric home I noticed that there was an entire corner missing from my yard and no matter how I laid out my pattern pieces I could not get all my pattern pieces out.  I thought about using the last little bits of the cream brocade, but there wasn't quite enough of it to do an entire piece.

However the burda pattern does include a yoke line on the back piece.  I had ignored it up until now, but now I decided that I could use that line and do the top half in the brocade and the bottom in the purple.  

Unfortunately It wasn't quite enough to make my pattern layout work so I needed another solution.  What I came up with was to combine the two sleeve pieces.  The Burda pattern comes with two pattern pieces for the sleeve with a seam up the outside of the arm curving around the shoulder.  If I joined the two pattern pieces along the straight edge of the arm, creating a dart at the shoulder I could get everything to fit.  so this is what I did.

Once again I cut all the pattern pieces out of the warm and natural batting and quilted it all together.  So now I had two separate jackets and had to figure out how to join them together.

My local discount fabric store didn't have any knit ribbing in any colour that would be useful to me so I took a trip to the more expensive fabric store.  Unfortunately they didn't have much either.  The only thing that I found was a pretty flimsy knit in either a cream colour with a tinge of green or in a purple.  I decided to go with the purple, but since the ribbing was soooo flimsy I bought a bit of knit interfacing as well hoping that I could use that to stiffen it up some.

I played around with using two layers on the knit, or using the knit and the interfacing and decided the knit by itseld, even with a double layer was not stiff enough so went with the knit plus interfacing. I cut out the collar, cuffs and hem band and sewed it onto the green layer and then sewed in the purple layer as you would bag a lining.  I got it all done...and hated it.  It looked terrible - the ribbing was all stretched out and wrinkly.

It was at this point that I remembered a piece of material that I had bought quite some time ago.  A heavy knit material in purple.  I went to my stash and dug around till I could find it....and lo and behold it was in fact a knit rib...a much heavier weight knit rib.   So I got out my unpicker and took the entire coat apart.  I re-cut the collar, cuffs and hem band in the heavier weight material, and then ripped all the interfacing off the light weight ribbing and used that ribbing as a sort of underlining just to make sure there were no issues.  

As one of the things I really struggled with first time around was attaching the cuffs to the sleeves, and since the sleeves felt really bulky I decided that whilst I had the whole thing apart I would trim down the width of the sleeve.  I tapered the under sleeve seam from nothing at the underarm to about 1.25" at the cuff.  This made the sleeve much more comfortable, but also made it a lot easier to attach the cuffs.

And so I re attached the collar, cuffs and hem band as described previously.

This just left the front of the coat to finish with the zipper.  I was lucky that the more expensive fabric store stocked reversible zippers in the length I needed, and was thrilled to find that they were a beautiful gold metal zip - that matched my jacket perfectly.

I sewed the zipper onto the green layer and then the purple layer was top stitched in place over it.

And we have a fully reversible bomber jacket in various shade of green and purple.

I love this coat.  With the two layers of quilting it is so warm.  I am a frog and I would be happy to wear my winter coat from the moment it starts cooling down, but I always feel a little silly in a full length coat in September.  This coat has all the warmth of my winter coat but in a much more autumn looking jacket.  I've worn it just about every day since I finished it.

The only thing that I would change were to I make this coat again would be the length of both the body and the sleeves.  I'm short, but at the size 36 the sleeves of this really ride up my arms if I reach forward.  I could also do with some extra length in the body as most of the time the coat doesn't cover whatever shirt I'm wearing.