The Bomber Jacket from “Gertie Sews Vintage Casual”

Before starting this blog post on the Bomber Jacket, I just want to mention that I was featured in the “Meet the Maker” series of Kollabora. For those of you interested, you can read my interview here (http://www.kollabora.com/blog/meet-maker-sew-progress). Now, moving on to the real topic: The Bomber Jacket from “Gertie Sews Vintage Causal.”

Now that my sewing skills are more advanced, I rediscovered my love for Gretchen Hirsch’s book “Gertie Sews Vintage Casual.” After making the ‘40s-Style Blouse in its sleeveless variation, I did not use the book again for a while. I am not sure why because I was really satisfied with the result. I ended up wearing this blouse a lot and it turned out to be one of my favorites. I don’t think that you have to be an advanced sewer to make the patterns in the book but maybe some of the variations require more skill. I also think that the book is quite helpful in improving your sewing skills. It has very informative sections on skills for knits and wovens and also for patternmaking.

I had my eye on the Bomber Jacket for a while. It also helped that the bomber jackets are in fashion this year. The jacket is a variation of the ‘40s-Style Blouse so you use the pattern from the blouse and the book gives instructions on how to make the necessary alterations. Most of the alterations were pretty self-explanatory. I just got stuck on one of them which was about “extending the length of the front dart tucks.” It took me a while to figure out how to do that but other than that it was pretty straightforward.

I made a muslin for this jacket and ended up changing the instructed alterations quite a bit. First of all, I made the jacket 6 cm longer than the one in the book. The sleeve turned out to be tight so I drew it again and added 1 cm on both sides. Also, the armholes turned out to be too snugly for my taste so I lowered them by 1 cm. I remember that this was also the case with the ‘40s-Style Blouse. It is totally a personal preference though. I just like looser armholes. Also, there were no instructions on what to do with the back tucks so I kept them.

The fabric choice was perfect for this jacket. I used a charcoal colored corduroy. I bought the fabric online from misskumash which is a Turkish fabric store.

The jacket is not lined so I used contrasting color bias binding to cover the seam allowances. I love it when the inside of a garment is as pretty as the outside.Overall, I was very satisfied with the final result. Since I made the jacket, I wore it quite a few times. It is perfect for spring. It was also fun to play with the pattern and change the shirt pattern into a jacket. Another thing that I like about the patterns in the book is that they include some hand sewing. Generally, I prefer to sew most parts of a garment using my sewing machine and most patterns do not include any hand sewing. The instructions in this book have a nice balance of machine sewing versus hand sewing. I feel that the act of sewing parts of a garment by hand really adds to the garment and at times it is easier. Do you ever hand sew parts of your garment?