Named Clothing Mai Zip Jacket

Just in time for spring (ok it is 85 degrees here)!

Varsity-style jackets have been very popular this winter, and when I saw the Mai Zip Jacket pattern on Named's website, I fell in love. 

For the body, I used a black and white plaid wool/cashmere blend coating, but since I am not a huge fan of the black and white plaid, I dyed it. This was pretty risky, since the fabric could have felted, shrank (although I did dye more yardage than I needed just in case), or the dye could have taken unevenly, but I lucked out and it came out great! 

I underlined the body with black silk organza, and used that to trace the pattern and pattern markings on to.  For the misc. smaller bits- the collar, zipper side pieces and pocket linings, I used some basic black wool.

The sleeves are leather, and although this was not my first time working with leather, this was my first time purchasing an actual hide, and that was fun! There is a leather store, LeatherWise, about an hour away from me, and although I was not able to go there in person, they gave me great advice on what to buy from them on-line.  They had many different color and texture options available, and it was tough to limit myself to just what I needed for jacket sleeves!

The lining is silk charmeuse quilted to lightweight quilt batting.  I wasn’t sure how this would work out; I was afraid that either the charmeuse would get ripples in it between the lines of quilting, or fluff from the quilt batting would get into my sewing machine and cause problems (I didn’t add a backing to the batting, as I was afraid that this would make my lining too thick). I made a generous test sample and found that the fabric/ quilting combo actually worked quite well- the batting is flexible enough that if the charmeuse rippled between rows you could just stretch out the batting in whatever direction you needed to fix it, and it also held together well and did not make a mess of my machine.

This jacket went together well- I had never sewn anything this complicated before so I did follow the directions carefully.  I hand-basted pretty much everything (lots of plaid to match up), and just took each step slowly and carefully.  I absolutely love it, and can't wait to make a summer version!