Customize a Jacket Session 1: Class Overview and Supplies Needed

In this class I'm gonna show you how to make several different variations of a jacket. When it comes to fall and winter time and you want to have a bunch of different jackets to pick from but you don't want to buy a bunch of different patterns to make them, it'd be good to be able to use one pattern to make a lot of them, and that's what I'm gonna show you how to do. So no matter what style or variation you choose a lot of your supplies and notions are gonna be the same. First of that is fabric. Now, the selections of fabric I have here vary greatly. I have one here that is a pre-quilted fabric, so you can see it'd be a nice, fluffy, really warm jacket, and that's an option you can use. I also have a sweatshirt fabric. This is also something that would make sort of a nice lightweight fall jacket. And then a third option is some faux leather, or you could use real leather. I have the faux leather here. So really you can pick any one of these three or anything in between. What you want to keep in mind when you're picking your fabric is what the pattern you're using recommends. Now, the only reason that this is important is a pattern will have a certain amount of ease built into it, and so if you pick a fabric that somehow mimics or resembles the fabrics that they recommend, you'll have a lot better end result. So speaking of patterns, we have a pattern here. Now, this is the pattern that I chose to make all of the variations off of. And when you are picking a pattern to make your, as your initial pattern, you want to sort of keep in mind what your end variation will look like. In my case, I really wanted to have a zipper on the side and a cross-body zipper. So in order to do that, I knew that I was going to need some overlapping fabric in the front. So for example, this is the pattern I'm gonna use today. If this view down here was the only option that was available, this pattern might not have been the one that I would choose because it doesn't have an overlapping front already. Now that's something that I could add to it, but it's just going to create a lot more work. So what I wanted to find was a pattern that already had an overlapping front, so that's this view here. So I knew that I would be able to add a zipper to one side, if I wanted, or in this case I've altered it and we've done it at an angle. So there's a lot less work we'll have to do with this option. So just sort of keep that in mind when you're thinking through what sort of alterations you want to make to your pattern. Now, since we will be doing some pattern alteration, there's a few tools that we're going to need. One of that is pens and pencils and paper. So I have here today, I have pens and pencils, and I'm using tissue paper. Now I like to use tissue paper because it's really easy to draw on, you can see through it so if you need to trace something it's really easy to use, it's really easy to find, and it's fairly inexpensive. Now when it comes to using tissue paper, I find that it's easier to use pencils rather than a pen. The pen I find can tend to tear the paper, so I would stick with pencils. Now the other thing we're going to need in order to do some altering to our pattern pieces are some rulers. And I have some favorites when it comes to the rulers that I like to use. These are two of them here. I like these rulers because I like that they have the grid lines, the inch grid lines here not just lines, and I like that you can see through them. I think it's a lot easier to line up your pattern pieces and your fabric if you can see through your ruler. Now my favorite of these two rulers is what's called an Omnigrip ruler. So this one is an Omnigrid and this is an Omnigrip. So the difference is how they actually print their lines on the ruler. You can see with this one it slides really easily on our pattern paper. Now we're going to be making some alterations to our jackets that require us to draw some really long lines. And so when you're doing that, you can see how easy it is for your ruler to move around on your paper. Now with this one here, the way they've printed the lines on the reverse side of the ruler actually creates a non-slip surface. So once you put it down all you have to do is apply a small amount of pressure and you can see that the ruler is not going to move. This will give you a lot more control when it comes to drawing some long lines and you won't have to worry about your ruler moving around a lot. So this is definitely something I recommend. It's great for fabric, even better with paper. And it's definitely something that will come in handy when you're doing any sort of pattern alteration. So the other tools that you're going to need we have over here. First one is a measuring tape. Now you have your rulers, which is what you're using in order to draw lines and do your alterations on your pattern pieces, but in order to decide what size of jacket you need to make, you need a measuring tape. Now, you want one that is flexible so you can measure around areas of your body, but you want one that doesn't stretch. So if you go to a fabric store to buy your measuring tape, they will generally be this type. They'll be fiberglass, which means they're not gonna stretch. Now if you get one at another store that maybe isn't necessarily a craft or pattern alteration ruler, it could have some give to it. And you may think that, "Oh, it stretches just a little bit; "it's not a big deal," but stretching up to just as little as 1/2 an inch can really change the overall size of your pattern. So you really want a measuring tape that has no stretch to it, so a fiberglass measuring tape is the way to go. Other tools that we will need. We have our scissors for cutting out our pattern pieces, but also I have some rotary cutters as well. Sometimes I find, especially with this thicker fabric whether it's the quilted one, or even once you get layers of that sweatshirt fabric, using a rotary cutter and cutting through all those layers can give you a much smoother line than using your scissors. We also have a seam ripper just in case we need it and we have some snips. Now, snips are great for if you have to trim off little threads from your, anywhere you're sewing right along your seams, you want to keep everything nice and neat, so you want a pair of snips for your thread. Then of course, we have the basics of a pins and pin cushion, as well as our thread. And then some hand sewing needles in there as well for if you're doing a jacket that requires buttons, like the one behind me here. So of course we need our notions. Now, some of them will be with buttons, if that's the option that you want to go with, or in this case, we're gonna make some alterations so we can actually have some zippers on the front of the jacket. And it's important to not just pick the prettiest zipper. You have to pick the one that fits the function you're going for. In this case, it's the front of a jacket, so we need a separating zipper. So when I first picked out one for the leather jacket, I found this really nice zipper. It's pretty gold. I thought it was perfect. I grabbed it, but it's not a separating zipper. What I mean by that is when I get to the end, you can't separate the pieces. So that means you would have to put your jacket on over your head first and then zip it up. So you want to make sure you're getting the right zipper. So in this case, we have a zipper here and you can see that it is called a separating zipper. That means I can totally take the two pieces apart, and that's exactly what I want to have for the front of a jacket. So double check that when you're picking out your notions. And then there's a couple of things that you might not think that you need, but that we're gonna use today for our pattern altering, and that is some sort of adhesive. So on a couple of these jackets I lengthened some areas, and to do that, I needed to add some paper onto the bottom of the existing pattern pieces, so I did that with some painter's tape. The reason I like using painters tape is because I can actually take it back off my pattern pieces if I want to take what I've added on back off at some point. A lot of times just clear tape, you'll end up ripping your pattern piece when you're trying to remove it and painter's tape tape comes off nice and clean. Another thing that I really like to use is actually found, if you do any sort of paper crafting you might be familiar with what this is, but it's actually an adhesive runner. And so it has some adhesive that when you run it along some paper, that it runs out some adhesive. Now we're gonna use this if you're going to use a faux leather fabric. And the reason why is because, here's your faux leather, if you put any kind of pins in it, you're gonna leave marks. You're gonna leave permanent marks in your fabric. So you want a way to attach your pattern paper to your fabric without using pins, so that's why I use this adhesive runner. You run a little bit of an adhesive on and then you can stick your fabric right to it. And then this particular adhesive is a repositionable or removable adhesive, which means that when I'm done, I can just take my fabric off and then this adhesive you just rub it and it just rubs right away. So then you don't have any sticky residue left on your pattern piece and you're free to use it again in the future without it becoming all clumped or things sticking to it. So this is a really cool thing to have if you're going to use a fabric like a faux leather that you don't want to use pins. So kind of think about what alterations you want to make, what you want your finished jacket to look like, gather all your supplies, and then come back and we'll get started on our jacket.