Harris Tweed Refashion

Thank you for your kind comments on my last post, it was great to hear your memories. It's a bit of a strange one today. I have refashioned a mans jacket into a womans coat. It is hard to photograph and explain the process but anyway here goes.

This is the jacket before the hack... a hacking jacket if you will. It is a Harris Tweed vintage jacket of my late fathers. His wife wanted to know if I could make it fit her so that she could wear it as a coat - I like a challenge.

I pinned out the back seam and took deeper darts on the front to give it some waist shaping. 

The trickier part is a tailoring technique called raising the shoulders which alters the neck to shoulder measurement. 

I am not an expert but I learnt how to do it two years ago from a mate who is a bridal and alterations seamstress. I used to do some alterations for her in the summer when she was busy with wedding dresses to keep her other customers ticking over so I knew what to do.

Sometimes this alteration just flies off the machine and other times it can be a real pig of a job to avoid getting tiny tucks on the new shoulder seam. 

Firstly, you find a point of entry. If you look closely on the inside of a jacket there will be a place that is sewn from the outside where the jacket was 'birthed' on turning it right side out on making. You have to unpick this and wrestle about to get to the inside of the jacket. 

This jacket was particularly well made and there were a lot of gubbings inside. Firstly, I did the darts and back seam which gave an instant new female shape.

Next I unpicked some of the shoulder seam lining to expose the shoulders. I cut out some of the padding and unpicked the tweed shoulder seam and made a new seam line. I checked for puckers (only one on my first attempt) then cut off the excess leaving enough bulk to support the top of the sleeve. Here is the new and old seamline. I trimmed about half way between the two.

 

This is what happens to the shoulders. You get a softer more womanly shape.

Finally, I removed the two buttons on the bottom of the sleeves and used them to make a new profile on the front. I made two new button holes and steam pressed the collar to make a new shape. The buttons were beautiful leather football style ones actually made from leather not the plastic repro ones which you get on old mans cardigans!

Tah da! a new coat. I hand stitched all the linings back down around the shoulders and at the point of entry. It is for Chantal's birthday present, she loved it. I made her a brooch to add to the lapel too although my photo is a little out of focus.

What do you think? Jo xxx