I finished the twill jacket for my hubby a few weeks ago and now I can finally share it. I was just too busy to blog about it. I've been busy planting my veggie garden and doing other spring chores. And I haven't had much time for sewing... sigh.

Anyways, the jacket was a lot of work, but it turned out pretty great. I couldn't find any good men's jean jacket patterns, so I had to do a rub off of my hubby's favourite jacket.

The original jacket is all grey. But, my husband wanted something fun and picked out the orange twill to go with the grey twill.


The front of the jacket has welt breast pockets and two lower in-seam side pockets. I used large buttons with orange thread to tie the grey/orange look together.


The side panels and back arm pieces are in orange.


The sleeves have plackets, which I am really proud of. The fabric was really thick, so smashing it with a hammer really helped in those areas.


On the inside you can see that I used orange on the inside cuffs and the inside bottom band. The collar stand is orange on both sides.

Since this is an unlined jacket, the pockets were a challenge. The upper pockets are made with one layer of fabric with serged edges. The pocket piece is then top-stitched to the jacket around the welt opening to make the pocket. The lower pockets use two layers of fabric to create the in-seam pocket. I made the inner pocket piece layer (that can't be seen) with poplin, so that it wasn't too thick. These pockets are then held into place by being top-stitched along the top edge to the jacket and the far sides are sewn into the button bands.

The hardest part of making the jacket was copying my husband's old jacket. Everything would have been faster if I had a pattern to work from. However, it did make fitting much easier, since the original was a good fit.

I'll try to get a few pictures of my husband wearing the jacket, since it looks much better on him than on a hanger.