The Refashioners 2018 - Inspired By

Once again it's time for the Refashioner's Contest, hosted by Portia Lawrie over on Makery.co.uk.  This years theme is "Inspired By".  From the blog the idea is:

Start with an image that inspires you. An outfit or garment that you covet. A style icon that you admire. A look that you want to recreate.  Find your inspiration….Then we want you to go ahead and recreate it!! The only caveat is…..you can ONLY use existing, unloved garments to do so. These can be from charity shops, from your own wardrobe, or even your old me mades that you don’t wear anymore. The key here, is to demonstrate, that whatever your heart desires, there is a way to achieve that by reusing unwanted garments IF you get creative.

Of course the first thing I did was spend hours in the internet browsing for inspiration.  I'm not the sort of person who gets inspired by designers or fashion - mainly because I never really see it.  So I had to go looking to see what is out there.  I found a number of different inspirations, things that I thought I could do with the right fabric, but then when I finally got out to the thrift shops it was only to find that there was nothing useful there - nothing that I could use to make these pieces.  

In the end I came home from my shopping expedition with just three items.  

1..  A green plaid women's jacket, Size 2 which then shrunk when I washed it (no way am I using anything from a thrift shop without washing it first) so not a lot of fabric to work with there.  The fabric is 100% wool and feels beautiful - I just wish there was more of it!

2..  A blue and black wool checkered womens jacket - A size 6 this time so again not a lot of fabric, but it is 100% wool.'

Showing the texture of the blue/black jacket

And 3..  a purple plaid flannel womens shirt.

The next thing to do was find inspiration for what these articles could become.  I started searching with just the word plaid.  Because I had so little fabric I latched onto the idea of making a plaid corset.  I knew it was unlikely I'd ever wear it but it would still be cool - and then I ran across these images.  

A plaid motorcycle jacket.  I loved it and I figured if I combined both of my jackets I should have enough material to do something similar to this with the side panels and under arm panels in a contrasting colour like this.

Since I had such a small amount of fabric to work with I wanted to salvage as much as possible so I got my unpicker out and spent a good couple of hours taking everything apart at the seams.  

For a pattern I went back to the Burda Larissa.  I used this pattern last winter to make this wearable muslin and then modified it to make this jacket.

The back piece I was able to cut directly out of the back of the original plaid jacket (extending into some of the front piece to get the width required).   The main sleeve piece took up the entire sleeve of the plaid jacket and then I used the blue/black sleeve to cut out the back/under side of the new sleeve.  

The side panels were cut out of the back/sides of the blue/black fabric.  

The right side front piece was able to fit on the remaining front of the plaid jacket but to get the material I needed for the left front piece I had to open out the facing of the original jacket.  Unfortunately when they made the jacket they didn't bother to plaid match the facing piece so there is now some terrible plaid matching right down the front of my new coat.  I'm a bit sad about that but I didn't really have any other choice - there was no remaining fabric to re-cut it and even if there was getting it to line up would have been highly unlikely.  As it was I had to take out the existing pockets and sew the original cuts closed - it's not the most beautiful finish but it's not TOO noticeable.

The remainder of the sleeve and the front pieces of the blue/black jacket were used to piece together the underlap and facing for the front of the new jacket.

I took all the shoulder pads and sleeve heads out of the original jackets.  I reused one set of sleeve heads when I installed the new sleeve, but chucked both sets of huge shoulder pads!

The only place where I used some new materials in this coat was my thread and some interfacing when inserting the two main pocket zippers as seen above.

I looked at making a collar out of the blue/black fabric but couldn't find any pieces big enough - then I picked up the button band from the plaid jacket and figured that I could use that as a mandarin collar.  I really like the way this turned out!

I also used the original back facing piece from the plaid jacket  as I didn't change the back neck curve.  I suppose I should take out the original label at some stage.

As for the lining - I used the green lining  from the plaid jacket for the back, sides and some of the front -wrapped it around as far as it would go and cut out the new arm hole. I then just filled in the remaining sections between the green lining and the facing with some of the black lining from the blue/black jacket.  

The sleeves were done as per the main coat - green for the main section with black on the back/under side.  

The lining was bagged and almost the same length as the coat - The coat is very short and I didn't want to lose any length turning the hem so the the lining goes right to the bottom of the coat.

In the end all the remained of the two coats was a bunch of tiny little scraps.

I knew from the start that I wanted a number of zippers in this coat as per my inspiration photo.  I went through my stash of reclaimed zippers and found one that was a great colour match - I beautiful green that almost matches the green in the plaid.  It was pretty short since it came off a hoodie that my daughter wore at about age 4.  But it was long enough for the main zip as far as I was concerned.  

However I couldn't find anything that would work for the pocket zippers.  So headed to the local charity shop, they don't sell any clothes, but they did have a couple of purses.  I found one that had two great bright silver zippers on the front plus two other black zippers and figured that that would be perfect. 

I took the bag apart entirely - I'll keep that cool sparkly fabric - I'm thinking that'd make great shoes at some stage.  But for now I just needed the zippers.

I put the two sparkly silver zips in at an angle for pockets.

The angle on these zippers is not the best for comfortably resting your hands, but it was the best look visually and they are functional.

The other two zippers from the bag were installed at the same angle over the left side of my chest.  There is only one pocket bag for the two chest zippers - but both zippers do work - they just both open onto the same pocket bag.

All the pocket bags were made using left over lining fabric.

The buckle and the magnetic snap at the top of the main zipper were salvaged from an old handbag that my best friend was throwing out.

The magnetic snap was added at the end when I realised I needed some sort of closure at the top of zipper.  I'd already enclosed all seams at that point so to install the snap I cut a round piece of leather with the snap still attached and sewed the whole circle onto my coat - I'm quite happy with how this looks.

I made the shoulder tabs and the lower band tab out of scraps of the plaid fabric backed with some of the black lining material.

The sleeves were too short at their original length so I used the pocket flap pieces all unpicked to extend the length of the sleeve.  I then took the original mandarin collar from the plaid jacket and used it to gather the extra width at the bottom of the sleeve.

I really like my finished jacket.  It's not the most beautifully finished of garments, but's it's amazing what you can do with a couple of left overs.

Not a bad match to my inspiration!

Stay tuned to find out what I do with the purple plaid - I have a plan - just need to see if I can make it work!