Sk8tr bois (Burda 9592)

After much pestering from my boys, I finally got round to making the 'leather' jackets that I'd promised them last year.

I used Burda 9592 (now discontinued) that I picked up for $5 at the shop where I was having my sewing machine serviced. Some time later I found this dark, chocolate brown pleather for 40% off in Spotlight. I bought it and it sat in my cupboard for several months, through the long, hot summer, while JJ (seven) periodically asked when I was going to make his jacket. When the weather turned cold I ran out of excuses, so I set to work on View A (times two).

The pattern I had was for age 10-15. That was fine for LJ (ten), but too big for JJ. Some down-scaling was in order. To do this, I used a very handy method from SewStylish.com that I had found ages ago and saved for just such an occasion.  

Source

The method involves drawing lots of radiating lines on each pattern piece and applying simple maths to work out where the lines on the smaller (or bigger) pattern should be drawn. The resulting, scaled-down pattern seemed to go together well, so thumbs up for this method.

The next obstacle was that the pattern specified shearling-type fabric (leather with sheepskin backing) for View A as this view is styled with raw edges to show off the wool lining. Well, even in sheep-rich Australia I don't know where I would find such a fabric, much less afford to buy it for children's jackets! And besides, I'd already bought this pleather so I had to make it work. In the end, I used some brown polar fleece to underline every pattern piece. This gave the jackets warmth and allowed the raw edge design detail to be utilised. 

Suffice it to say that the pattern re-sizing and cutting out the pieces for two jackets in pleather and fleece took a blinking long time!

Raw edges on cuffs, pockets and hem.

I have to say that JJ really helped the process (not) by popping into the sewing room at regular intervals and asking when his jacket would be ready!

Raw edges on collar and yoke.

Once I started sewing, these jackets went together reasonably quickly. I treated the fleece and pleather together as a single layer for each piece, which worked fine.

I like the contrast provided by the fleece on the inside of the collar and on the raw edges of the hem, cuffs, pockets, collar and yoke.

The boys are very pleased with their jackets, so Yay for Mum-sewing! I wanted them to pose by this graffiti wall for the pictures, so I had to bribe them with a visit to the adjacent skate park. 

I had to take these photos in 2 minutes flat, before they raced off to do this:

and this:

That's my boys :)