St. Pat's Outfits

It has been almost two months since I finished the jackets and vests for my bf and his roomie so here is the post that I have been promising.

I am not sure how it all began, but somewhere in a conversation it was mentioned how cool it would be to have a green suit jacket to wear for St. Pat's. Me, being crafty, piped up with "If you buy the stuff I can make them." So, a jacket pattern was ordered (hard to find for men by the way) and a trip to the fabric store was in order. There were no awesome green colors in the normal suit jacket fabrics so they picked out a green corduroy instead. There were also vests to be made so a more St. Patty's kind of fabric was chosen for that.

Apparently I have since lost the pictures of when I took over the boys' dining room table to make these creations, but it happened. I also had a few words to say about various parts of the project. The first being the interfacing.

I HATE INTERFACING! I guess I got the wrong stuff or something but for the life of me I could not get it to stick to the corduroy!!! It was the kind that you have to use a wet cloth over when you iron and steam it to the fabric pretty much. If I would have known when I bought it (should have read directions) then I would have gotten different stuff. In the end it was only but on the extremely necessary pieces and I also ran out.

The other frustrating thing... sleeves. They never go on right or easy and it is just a pain. I do not like them and told the bf if he wanted me to make him more jackets he was going to have to rock the sleeveless look.

One sleeve on!

So, I get to putting the lining in the roomie's jacket and realize that the way the pattern says to sew the collar gets you really ugly corners on the collar. After some googling I realized to do it a better way would mean ripping most of the jacket apart and so I fought with it and made it work. But the bf's jacket was assembled a little differently and looked WAY better. Well, to me anyway... anyone just glancing probably would not be able to tell. I also hate how the pockets are just fabric with lining on them sewed to the outside of the jacket. It looks horrible and the lining shows if you look closely. I was disappointed that the pockets were not on the inside and if I make another one I will put them inside no matter what.

And buttons... picking buttons took like an hour! but they were perfect buttons for the project. Some Celtic style ones for the vests and some with crests on them for the jackets. A different crest for each jacket.

But finally I finished two jackets just in time. They were awesome and by the end I thought a nice fitted jacket for me would look cute... if someone else made it! So, here's some pictures of the final products. Some are of my bf's which is larger than the roomie's jacket.

bf showing his off with the roomie's in the back.

Showing off the jacket and vest.

Ready to drive to his parent's house to show off.

In the end I was pretty impressed with myself and very proud. Here's what the oldest sis had to say about the vests on my facebook page...

"I saw the suit jacket you made, you need to work on sewing closer to the edge of the pocket (tracing paper laid over the top so it doesn't get sucked up in your presser foot helps, then wet the paper and pull it off/out from the stitches). Also squarer corners on the collar, snip and use a large crochet needle or knitting needle to push it square.
Otherwise you did a good job."

I like how my sister gets her compliment skills from our mom... And although I did not know about the tracing paper part, I did do the corner trick but the corduroy is just thick enough it would not form perfect points.