Sewing Sunday - Leather Jacket
Yep, I made a leather jacket for Nanea. I had this leather jacket from Build A Bear sitting in my doll's wardrobe, waiting for a tailoring. Faux leather outside, (ugly) fleece inside. (I can't find a photo of it on the internet and I didn't take a picture of how it looked before). Since I think that most soldiers returning from WWII joined up in biker gangs, I thought it would be oddly cute and somewhat historically accurate for her to have a leather jacket in her collection. I want to add some iron-on embellishments or something, maybe saying 'Kittens' or 'Kitten' on the back (Nanea and her friends call themselves the kittens).
Tailoring BABW clothes to AG is not as hard as you may think. All you need is the clothing you want to be tailored, a stitch popper (or a pair of scissors if you a) feel like obliterating the clothes and b) not dealing with tearing clothes up stitch by stitch...). Then you measure your doll (I have my doll measurements down in a journal), measure the clothes out then stitch them together.
While you may be racing to your sewing machine, I put this together with hand stitching. Oh yeah. That's why it took me forever and a day to do it. I, you know, took an actual needle, threaded it and ran it through the fabric stitch by stitch by hand. I'm very proud of myself. I showed my mom and she got proud of me too and kind of shocked by the work I did. I know the cut is a little weird, but... I think it makes it a little cuter and Japanesey (... is that a word?).
To make your own jacket like this one without having to go to BABW, buy one then rip it apart and put it back together, this jacket is made of 5 parts. Yes. 5 parts.
The back is one piece and the backbone (ba ba bum bum tiss) of your jacket. This should be the width of your doll's torso and go up as high as you want it to (Nanea has a torso length of 6 inches, but her jacket only uses about 3 inches of it and her torso width is 11 inches).
The front pieces should either cover her torso completely with the aid of a zipper or leave a space (the zipper from the BABW was too big for Nanea). These two pieces can't be completely sewn together, you have to leave a space for the sleeves to go into. They should equal about half of the torso width and match the height (about 6.5 inches width for Nanea and 6 inches in length).
The sleeves can be two or one pieces. Mine was one piece, which is semi-folded in half. One piece would be easier for sewing because it only requires one closure stitch, the hem and the attaching to the front pieces of course. They should be the width of the arm (5 inches for one piece, 2.5 for two) and as long as you want it (Nanea's shoulder to wrist length is 5 inches).
Then once you get all your material ready for sewing, just sew and done! It's sew easy!
(And that was so corny. I apologize.)
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