- Jean jackets have been part of our core closets for well over 100 years.

The first was created by Levi Strauss for cowboys, railroad engineers, and miners to wear during the Gold Rush.

Since that time, women have adopted them and made them a staple, making it a great choice for the fourth piece of our capsule wardrobe.

We'll look at fabrics for today's jean jackets, fit this jacket to perfection, and then show the methods of sewing that will make your jacket look just like it came out of the pages of the latest fashion magazine , all today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle, peppy music) (gentle piano music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Bennos Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

- I love jean jackets.

Two episodes ago we had Heather, who was our image consultant.

And she went through Keeta's wardrobe, and she said yes and no and yes and no, but she said yes to jean jackets.

And so what that means is that we get to keep em!

Yay!

But the best thing about them is even though years ago they were really created for men, and they were created for logic and reason, women can bring them into our wardrobes.

And I've never seen a jean jacket where we said, oh, that just looks too young.

She's trying to dress too young.

They penetrate all ages.

So even on little, little ones, young ones, old, they just look good on everyone.

But there's fabrics to consider.

There's an updated jean jacket that we wanna talk about.

And then there's, of course, the fit, which we all wanna get down.

I'm gonna show you some sewing methods that are really gonna make this easy for you.

And then you can have all of your options available to you.

But I wanna take a look at the mannequins.

And I wanna show you a few differences between them.

Besides the denim, and obviously, denim is the most popular of all the fabrics used, leather is a go-to.

It's probably the next most favorite.

It doesn't have to be a real.

If you're not a real leather person, then use a faux leather.

Both are great options, and they still have a great presentation.

Linen is one I've used.

And it's just been one of my favorite, especially a black linen.

I find that I just grab it.

Just so many places, it just works.

It can be dressed up or down.

And it's really nice to have it.

I want you to notice with these two, both of them are left worn open, just a little bit.

So it's not that we wanna make them fit, we actually wanna make them a little smaller than what we are because if we take a look at what happens when we make a jean jacket fit and then wear it open, it just really has a tendency to look a little baggy.

There's no reason to close it.

There's reasons to make the angles right and correct all of those things, but there's no reason to actually close it up and fit it closed unless I'm gonna wear it closed.

And if I'm gonna wear it closed, go ahead.

But then you can see that we can do all kinds of options to the sleeve.

So as we get to making those different sleeves and those different parts and pieces, we don't have to do the cuff.

If that in our beginning seamstress life seems too difficult, we can back it up a little bit and keep it simpler.

I love doing leather, clearly there's leather.

(chuckles) But one thing I do about leather because so many people say to me, oh, my goodness, what fabric is that?

And I'll say leather, and they'll say, no, that's not leather!

It doesn't look like leather.

This is just my little thing.

I'll show you a little secret I have.

I always leave a little hole or a little flaw or a little wrinkle or something because it reminds me that it's real, it's not like a patent or a vinyl or something like that.

And I just like that.

So with all the jean jackets I make, I always leave some kind of little flaw someplace.

But that's just me.

So let's talk about the pieces now.

Typical jean jackets, I almost hate to tell you, but they have 14 pieces.

Now, you know, just think of like a jigsaw puzzle, two pieces isn't really that much fun.

But thousands of pieces are a lot more fun.

This is what the jean jackets are like.

But the good news about these pieces is we can really use multiple different fabrics.

We can coordinate them however they want.

But a typical jean jacket is going to have three pieces in the middle.

It's got your front, your middle, your side, and then a front yoke.

It's gonna have the front facing that comes up, and a lot of times it's fun to do that in a contrasting.

The bottom band, it's got two pieces in the back.

It's got a back yoke, and then it's got your collar which is a up or an under collar that just kind of helps it curve a little bit.

And then it's got three pieces for your sleeve.

So it's got your upper sleeve, your under sleeve, and then the cuff.

Now, keep in mind, we can take away whatever parts and pieces we want.

Jean jackets as vests are fabulous.

We just take away those three pieces, and we don't worry about it.

And then we've got down to 11 pieces.

So, feel free to leave off the parts that make us nervous.

Later on down the road, we'll show you some alternatives to the jean jacket.

So it doesn't have to always look the same when we make it.

But decide on our fabrics, and then what we wanna do is get that jean jacket fitting exactly like we want to.

And I'm gonna point out some things that are gonna work well for you, but the best way to do it is to really make up a sample.

I'm gonna bring Jeannie on.

Jeannie, thanks so much for doing this.

- You're welcome.

- Alright, so with the jean jacket, we really want it to, we're gonna look at all the fitting issues.

And as I fit, I'm gonna actually change her right here on the table.

This is her pattern.

So, she picked her size.

How did you pick your size?

- I had a jean jacket that I previously owned that I liked, and I measured the circumference of it.

And that's how I picked the size.

- Perfect, so you just, it's actually smaller than your bust, it doesn't close.

- Yes, correct.

- But even more importantly than what we think is right or what we think it should be is what we want it to be.

So again, there's times where I call a jean jacket almost like an accessory.

- Yeah.

- Because it doesn't close, and it's not a jacket per se.

It's definitely not worn for warmth most of the time.

It's worn for style, and it's just a great look.

So, she purposely picked it too closed.

- Yes.

- Too small.

- Too small, yeah.

- We don't wanna do anything with that.

She picked the circumference that she liked.

And the facing when you sew it on doesn't change that, so we're just gonna leave that circumference all alone.

So, we're gonna go through L, C, and D. And if you're a Fit 2 Stitch fan, you know what we're gonna say.

If you're not, listen up, and we'll explain it as we go.

So, L is the length from our base of our neck to bust.

In this case, because there's no direct darting, there's no exact point of length.

So we don't even have to worry about length.

Now, overall length is a style option, and as long as, remember, this has a band at the bottom.

As long as it's long enough, we don't have to worry about that even.

Here's the thing I want you to notice.

On her, if you notice it's going up at the front, and it's coming down at the side seam.

We've got some lines that we wanna get rid of.

The negative of it coming up at the front, if you notice, it's kind of coming off her chest, rather than silhouetting her body, and we really want more of a silhouette than it just flaring out.

So we're gonna show you how to fix that.

It's not L because if I were to make this whole piece shorter or this whole piece longer, you see, it still does the same thing.

So we know it's not a circumference issue, and we know it's not a length issue.

So what that leaves us is depth.

And I'm gonna tell you that for most of you, our darting issues are depth.

Our wrinkles are depth.

I can said that all at once.

Darting equals depth, depth equals darting.

So if I see things that are right here but wrong here, I know a dart is gonna be needed to pull them back in.

So let me explain to you kind of what's going on in this particular jacket.

You're okay?

- Yeah.

- Appreciate the muslin.

The muslin is just a trial.

It doesn't matter what fabric it is.

It doesn't matter if it's an old junk thing out of your closet.

You're basically just pulling it together.

You want it to be stable.

This is a nice woven, and you want it to be as similar to the final product as possible, just so that you can make sure those angles are correct.

Alright, this is imaginary.

If we measure from the base of her neck, and measure over her bust to her waist, we're gonna call that, just for fun, we're gonna call it A.

Then if I measure from the shoulder and go down to her waist, we're gonna call that B.

So Jeannie, help me out.

You're a wiz at math.

Which is longer, A or B?

- Well, A is the front, longer.

- That's right.

A is always longer.

Why is it longer?

'Cause I have a chest in the middle, and then of course, my shoulder's angled.

So both of those things make A longer than B.

So my job is to make sure the cloth is equal, even though cloth can't automatically change itself.

But that's my job.

So that is why it's pulling up here at the front is because she's actually longer here than what the pattern is allowing in this garment.

But because the body's always right and the pattern's always wrong, we're not gonna fix you.

We're gonna fix the pattern!

So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a dart right here at this side.

Now, automatically, you see what that does is it pulls it.

I'm just kind of gonna show that again.

It changes the angles.

It pulls this back down so that now it silhouettes, which is we want because she'll look thinner.

And it also gets rid of all this wrinkling at the side.

Now what I'm gonna do is once I pin this, I'm gonna show you directly how do it in your tissue.

The reason this is a very common alteration is because this is where the bust dart belongs.

We are not going to have this in our final product because we have these beautiful seams, and we don't need to.

We can end it right at the end of the seam, and any time in a garment that we can end the change right at the end of a seam, that means we don't have to sew it.

The only darts we have to actually sew in garments are the darts like the bust dart and the waist dart, those darts that end internally.

But this one, I'm gonna come, and I'm going to measure down from the armhole.

Just use either point of reference.

I could measure down from the armhole or up from the side seam.

I'm gonna measure, and if I go two inches down, I'm taking in a whole entire inch.

So the whole reason I laid these pieces out is then go to the next piece and measure how far down.

So that is going down six inches, five inches, I'm sorry.

And I took up a half inch.

Then if you notice, this front piece is not changed at all.

So the pieces I'm not changing I'm just gonna take away.

This one, I go down my four.

I take in and pull up a whole inch, but it goes to a half inch right there.

So that alteration just tapers right into that next piece, boom!

Then this piece, I take the half inch there, and that tapers to nothing.

So all I do is lay out the pieces, and as I drape them and make these changes on her, I'm gonna take them right back to my tissue, the same exact place.

After I've made the first muslin, I could always make, we call it a clean muslin.

That just means, and I would recommend, if your fabric is really expensive, if it's maybe a leather and you haven't worked with before, I would do it again because I think in my experience, we make mistakes.

We just make, oh, I could have sworn I did that!

But we forgot, and we didn't.

Alright, so that you notice, I really love how that does to your body.

That's a big difference.

- I don't feel like I have a tent on now.

- That's right!

(both laughing) And no tents, this is a jean jacket.

No tent jean jackets!

Because this inch is here at the side, I actually have to carry it along.

So I'm actually gonna take my pieces and kind of put em like this because they're gonna continue.

So this is the side, and this is the side.

I would have to make that there at side.

But I'm gonna turn her because what we wanna see is where the cloth naturally tells me to stop.

Even if I try to stop right here, you can see all this extra on her back there, it's not gonna let me stop there.

So I'm gonna continue until the cloth is just pretty and smooth.

I don't know how deep it is, but I'm gonna let the cloth kind of tell me.

It's called listening to the cloth.

That almost sounds a little crazy, but I'm going to listen to the cloth so that I can do what it's telling me to do.

And then I'm just gonna take it back to the pattern.

That's what we call draping.

And also if you notice, it's hanging free to where it's not only shapelier but it's suiting the angles of her body so much better.

Now this is directly in the back of you, and I can hear you all.

You're saying, I can't do that on myself.

But you can because you can't literally do it on yourself, but you can look in the back.

You can see exactly what I saw which was way too much fabric, take it off.

Guesstimate it, how much it is.

Start with maybe a half inch, taper to nothing, and then put it back on.

So it's gonna take you a little more time to take it off, put it on, but you can absolutely do it by yourself.

I think it's the knowledge that this is a dart and that a dart can be wider and change amounts at the seams that it goes to.

So it's the inch here.

We're gonna measure what it is at this seam, and that seam is right there.

That seam is one inch.

So this amount actually carries all the way through.

So when I take that inch up, that piece from our draping comes all the way through across.

It's an inch right there at that point, and at the back, it's only a half inch.

So this is all how our bodies angle, but it is absolutely impossible to measure these changes.

You can't, you know, a tape measure can't possible measure the hollows and the changes.

So this is why drape is so important.

On a jean jacket, it's not that it will make it better or worse.

It'll just kind of make it, it's what Heather was talking about.

It just kind of polishes it.

It really makes it all that much better when you don't have clumps of fabric all over.

So I did the body first.

It doesn't matter the order.

It's all depth, but pay attention to that shoulder seam.

And if you notice, that shoulder seam is a little gappy in both places.

Shoulder seams are probably the most often changed area of the body, and that's simply because, just think of those many pattern makers out there and the many bodies out there and how in the world would one pattern or even a garment that's made up fit all the angles of shoulders out there.

It's just not logical.

So I need you to understand this.

I need you to come along and take out that shoulder seam.

So let me tell you the goal of the shoulder seam.

It doesn't matter where it is, front or back, because we see dropped shoulders, no shoulder seams, we see all those variables.

What we want is that when we touch the seam, we want it to have control over the front and control over the back.

If the seam is too far back, it won't control the front.

If the seam is too far front, it won't control the back.

So all I'm gonna do is pinch this up.

And I am going to taper it to the neck edge because there was nothing wrong with the neck edge.

It is kind of the leader, but I can take this up.

And you can see what a nice job that does now, and it's so much better.

I love it, I love it, I love it!

It's got a nice clean armhole.

That's what she wants.

Does it, I know it doesn't feel, but I mean, - It feels so much better.

- You can feel a little bit.

I wanna do the sleeve, hang on one second.

Let's interpret these changes back onto our muslin where we were.

We're at the yoke.

So we're at the front yoke and the back yoke.

And because both were changed the same amount, I'm gonna just look.

And it's only a half inch.

So I take a half inch down here, and I could just actually taper it to nothing like that.

I can fold that down here, and I fold it here as well.

Alright, so when we do that, the only thing we've gotta fix next is our sleeve because we've made the armhole smaller.

But we're not gonna fix the sleeve.

We're actually just gonna take the armhole, here's the front.

I'm gonna do this how it is.

Because I have dropped this down just a little bit, I'm just going to measure that amount and take the same armhole.

I'm gonna lower it down a half an inch, and that's it.

I'm actually gonna do, I'm gonna restore the armhole exactly like it was before I made that change.

And I'm gonna do the same thing to this one.

I folded that down a half an inch there.

So see the whole armhole is here.

I'm just gonna take it down a half inch here as well.

And I won't change that armhole a bit.

Let's do a sleeve.

A sleeve is a two-piece sleeve.

When I fold it in half, I've got, that's the front and that's the back.

The lower seam is the front.

The higher seam is the back.

I'm gonna put this on, just gonna pin it in place.

And what you'll notice a lot of the time, and just relax your arm, is you see that little twist that happens right there.

And when that happens, what that means is the sleeve is straighter and the arm is more bent.

So the whole reason you have a two-piece sleeve is, let me show you, when I put these two pieces together, is you can see there is a bend in that arm.

If I put the back pieces together, there right there, that missing section, is my dart.

And what that does is it pulls the arm forward, if I cuff this up, it's still there, so we know it's not a length issue.

If I take circumference away, it's still there.

It's not a circumference issue.

It's a depth issue.

If I just make a little dart, and usually, this is only like a half an inch, in the front, bam.

That takes it away.

So she relaxes her arm.

You see that now the sleeve and Jeannie's arm bend the same amount.

That's the goal.

So I can measure where that is.

Remember that these are my two fronts.

And for me, sometimes it helps to just put it together.

I'm gonna make a little dart there.

When I make that dart, notice on the back, it tapers to nothing.

Here I make the same amount so that my seams will match, and again, tapers to nothing.

And this is just fun!

And if you're gonna make a jean jacket, we might as well get it to fit just beautifully.

Alright so I'm gonna sew it for you now.

- Oh, boy, thank you!

- You're ready to go.

I'm gonna steal it, and I guess I could leave it on you.

But we're gonna go to the sewing machine and sew a few things.

Thank you, Jeannie!

Appreciate you being here.

So just, you have to recognize that of all these pieces, there's really only the core body that I changed.

It's not like changed tons and tons and tons.

So let's go to the sewing machine, and let's learn a few things about making it.

And then we will get going.

Alright, so our contemporary jacket, really what's happened, is our fabrics have changed immensely.

And I think it is just so exciting as I see the, I mean, if you really start Googling jean jackets, you just see everything except denim anymore.

There's so many options, and they're beautiful.

So this was a fabric I used, an embroidered linen, absolutely love it because one thing I've noticed in jean jackets is I like just the opposite of what they've been.

They've been the heavy denim, the leather.

I love the light, the sheers, beautiful fabrics that they're being made out of.

I think they really offer some beautiful alternative.

So with this, you how you do the front panels.

I have made jean jackets out of sheer fabrics, and women have said to me, but what do you with the seams?

And how do you hide them?

You don't hide them because the thing about it is is they don't need to be hidden.

So just kind of keep that in mind.

I would use a matching thread.

I would be careful in that whole concept.

But if the seams show, and I've seen it on jackets that cost lots and lots of money, even if the seams show, it's just not a big deal.

So just be aware of that and use the same color and then decide for yourself.

But I do wanna show you a couple things that are done on the collar and on the cuff.

On the collar, now what I chose to use is the matching fabric behind it just to give it a little bit more solid look.

But I do wanna show you how to sew this collar.

So keep in mind on a jean jacket, when I go to do right sides together, the longer edge is actually the outside edge.

The shorter edge is the neck edge.

So we're gonna do it this to, we're gonna sew this to where we sew off the edge.

I'm just gonna put two stitches in here.

And I want you to see how we actually sew it.

(whizzing and quick thumping) Alright, so I sew that way.

And I'll show you this after we sew.

I'm gonna sew that way.

And then because this is an acute angle, just meaning, I can't just fold twice, I'm gonna fold this down.

Don't clip anything away.

I'm gonna fold that in.

And then I'm gonna fold that in.

You're gonna make a little nice, neat fold in there.

And when you reach up and go to turn it to the outside, look at that point just pops out.

It's like amazing how clear and crisp that is.

And it's not in anything magical.

It's just in how you sew and how you fold, that's it.

So then what I did is I folded this whole thing.

I did the same thing.

I turned it, I pressed it.

But then you're gonna back it off just a little tiny bit.

You just back that up.

And what I wanna show you is how you actually apply that to the jacket itself.

So, on the front of the jacket, I've sewn all the pieces together.

I've sewn the bodice on.

Again, it's all just straight sewing.

But about, and it's always marked on your pattern, but probably about two inches, back it up from the center front.

I have made a little clip in the seam, and I have folded that in because that's actually what stays on the final jacket.

And how you put the collar on is the collar actually laps right over the raw edge.

So what you wanna do is press under this raw edge on the collar.

You've got this all finished on the machine.

You wanna press into the raw edge.

And literally lap that.

You'll wanna do both sides just to make sure it's the same distance on both edges, but then you'll come here and you'll overstitch that and completely sew the collar on the same exact way.

It's really easy, and it's really fun.

And then you'll sew and make the front facing because that's how it's done.

It's turned back and then topstitched.

The other thing I wanna show is with the cuffs.

This is what's called edgestitching.

And edgestitching is just a really simple way to do things that we are gonna do this, in this case, with the collar.

We're gonna edgestitch it on place.

We're gonna do it with the cuffs, and we're gonna do it with the bottom band.

And in every case when you edgestitch, what you do is you can put your little finger under there, and you can see that it was never done right sides together and then flipped back.

It was actually overstitched.

So in this particular case, I'm gonna fold the collar back.

I made it match with my little circles.

I'm gonna slip it over the edge of the sleeve, and then I'm simply just gonna stitch it right in place.

So I love a jean jacket.

My goal was to make sure you love a jean jacket as much I make a jean jacket.

So I hope you do.

Do a little bit of fitting.

So many women say to me, I don't wanna make a muslin.

I don't make a muslin.

The fact of the matter is, a muslin will just not take you that long.

And it really gives you confidence through the whole entire process.

So I'm gonna really encourage you to be that little patient.

Remember what Heather suggested, we just take the time to reflect that little minute.

I do think that's just really important, and then notice as we go through and fit, have your tissue right here.

Do the changes, do the tissue.

It can only be either L, C, or D. You may know our next guest, or you may not.

But either way, you'll be stunned at what she will teach you about sewing those seams.

Join us next time on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle piano music) - [Narrator] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Bennos Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

(sweet flute music) To order a four-DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series 7, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.

(rapid, joyful music)