KCWC 2011: Red jacket and silver T-shirt

Red parachute jacket Red parachute jacket

More KCWC 2011 projects! This red jacket is made with parachute fabric and black jersey. I found the parachute in the tiny fabric store near my house, it was very cheap and I still got more than 1 m left. The black jersey is recycled from adult T-shirt. The pattern is called Nectarine, bought as PDF pattern from Tamanegi Kobo, an online Japanese pattern store. The original pattern has button closure, but I changed it to zipper closure.

Red parachute jacket Red parachute jacket

Sewing it was so difficult! The pattern is actually wonderful and the instruction diagrams are very clear, but I have never sewn parachute before and it behaves kinda differently. It is very light that it seems to almost fly away every time I touched it. The needle would leave marks, so I can’t use pins or make mistakes. Of course I used pins after all and has ripped countless stitches, so the jacket has lots of tiny needle marks along the stitching lines.

It also won’t stay flat and of course I couldn’t iron it, so wrinkles have to be accepted as part of the design. I used longer stitch length and loosen the tension a bit so the wrinkles are not too bad. On the other hand, the wrinkles kinda hide the needle marks, so I guess it is a good thing.

Red parachute jacket Red parachute jacket

Red parachute jacket Red parachute jacket

To make it more comfortable, I underlined the jacket with black jersey mesh, which added more challenge because it is so slippery. The jacket looks okay from the outside but I’m not really proud of the finishing inside. Anyway, I have to say that I love the finished result, it is such a fruit of hard labor!

Silver T-shirt Silver T-shirt

Silver T-shirt
Skull and cross tag

The second project is a silver T-shirt. Silver clothing is really not my thing, but I began to realize that what I want Sidra to wear is often different than what he really wants to wear.  So I’ve been trying to find out what he really likes. After all, he’s the one who is going to wear them, so it is better if he likes them. Sidra is not too crazy about muted color palette (maybe every kid is like that?) nor subtle detail that didn’t scream outloud. He likes black, red, gold, and silver. So a comfortable linen shirt in dusty grey is definitely not his taste, although I would really love to see him in that.

Anyway I told him that I was going to make a T-shirt, and I asked Sidra what he wanted it to be. Not surprisingly, he answered, “I want a silver T-shirt.” So silver it is.

I love using recycled fabrics for Sidra’s clothes. The pattern pieces for his clothes are small and can fit one adult clothes. It is also a cheaper alternative since he will soon outgrow these clothes. And sometimes I can find interesting fabric that I couldn’t find in fabric stores, like this silver jersey. There is a thrift store in walking distance from my house (I love my neighborhood!),  I went there and found this silver men’s T-shirt. It is perfect because it is not blatantly silver, but more like black with cracked silver over it.

P1200465.JPGI presented these clothes to my little customer when he got back from school, and he really loves them. Like, really really loves them! After I took the pictures, he refused to take them off and went to show off his new clothes to his friend who is visiting. Today is raining all day long so they couldn’t play outside, so they just played inside with Sidra wearing his silver T-shirt and red jacket (^_^)

Jacket pattern is Nectarine from Tamanegi Kobo, button closure changed to zipper.
T-shirt pattern is from クライ・ムキの子供服―Simple+one (別冊家庭画報).

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