I love to thrift shop. I’ve been looking for a black leather jacket for a long time–it had to fit, the price had to be right, and I had to like it, too.
A few months ago, I finally found it. I was excited until I got it home and realized that whoever donated it had cut off almost all the buttons! What a crummy thing to do. So I wore it without buttons until I could find some that were suitable.
One afternoon, as I jumped into Bruce’s truck, the back of the jacket caught on the door, and it tore! I was so upset, especially when I saw that the tear was in the leather itself, and it wasn’t just a seam that came undone. I mulled it over for weeks trying to figure out what to do. I thought I’d buy some lace to put over it, but it just didn’t feel right.
I have a friend who likes to sew clothing and dress up the occasional purchased garment. The first chance I had to see her, I asked her opinion. She liked my lace idea, and suggested I also put it on the front behind the pockets for balance. Loved it!
So I headed off to the fabric store. I looked at lace fabrics, but nothing really worked for me. I wanted a heavier lace, and the ones they had weren’t completely black. They were black with teal or purple highlights. I wandered down the denim aisle and found a black denim with a flocked design. I took it to the cutting table and laid out the coat with the denim over it, and decided it was perfect. I bought 1/2 yard and a spool of heavy duty black thread.
So here’s how I went about fixing my jacket.
First, I patched the tear. I cut a piece of the denim large enough to cover the whole tear and then some. Then I cut the stitching that held the lining to the hem of the jacket, folded out the hem, and sewed the patch in place, being careful not to catch the lining.
The back of my jacket is sewn in sections. There are four sections across the back from the neck to my waist, and four more from waist to the hem. All of them are sewn with flat felled seams, so my plan was to just undo one edge of the seam, tuck the fabric under, and top stitch it back in place. Because of the placement of the tear, I decided to cover the entire width of the back from the waist down.
First, I measured the length and width of the piece I needed. Then I checked for shape by laying my ruler along the seam and setting it parallel to the hem. I found there was a slight curve through the waistline. I also found that the side seams flared out from the waist slightly.
I cut my fabric just a bit bigger than the area I needed to cover, but enough that I had room to finagle if I needed to. I didn’t want to have to go buy more fabric. Next, I unpicked one side of the seams. That turned out to be trickier than I thought. The seams were originally sewn horizontally and then vertically, and I needed to unpick it horizontally. So at each place where the horizontal crossed the vertical, I had to unpick the vertical seam for a ways, too. Unpicking everything took a few hours. Finally, I was ready to add the fabric!
First, I laid the fabric on the jacket and got a rough idea of the shape of the waistline. Then I trimmed the top edge to that shape, tucked it under the seam, and pinned it in place, being careful not to catch the lining. Since I was covering the leather, I didn’t worry about the pins making holes in the leather. I also added another pin near the center bottom to keep the fabric from rotating as I worked with it. Once that was in place, I folded the sides back along the side seams and cut the extra off.
Then I tucked under the side seams and pinned that into place as well. This sounds easy, but it was painfully tricky. Just pinning this in place took several tries, and took well over an hour. But once I was at this point, it was time to sew! Yay! First I topstitched the vertical seams at the waist, then I topstitched the horizontal seam. Next, I stitched the side seams. Then I trimmed the bottom of the fabric to match the leather, folded the hem back up, and topstitched about an inch from the fold. And for some crazy reason, I didn’t take a photograph of the back of it once I was done. I’ll add a picture to this post later.
One step done. Next I needed to add the fabric under the pockets on the front. And tonight I’m tired, so I’ll show you the rest later.