Hello all! This is a project that simmered in my brain for over a year before it came to fruition. Way back in April 2019 I wanted a light jacket to take on my trip to New York and I thought a bomber jacket would be perfect. Alas, I took too long deciding on colour combinations and ran out of time. Originally I bought just teal and white softshell to make the jacket with, but as lockdown started and I started debating the project again I decided that it needed a third colour, a light pink. Also, prepare yourself for various stages of me looking like a drowned rat in these photos - you have been warned.

I spent a while in photoshop mocking up different colour block options and trying to avoid well known flags, football teams or an overtly 80s look. In the end (as you will have already guessed) I went for the top left option.

After finalising the design, it was time to draft the thing! I actually ended up drafting a mens t-shirt block to my measurements I think, purely because I couldn’t find any instructions for a dartless bodice block in my womenswear books. I also remember doing a small bust adjustment. Once I was happy with my pieces it was time to do the fun part and draw on my colourblocking lines. I only did the front and back bodice pieces at first and I think I worked out some kind of maths to make sure that all of the angles were relevant to each other.

I cut the sleeves out in calico first and inserted them into my front and back jacket pieces so I could try it on and get my boyfriend to use a ruler to just continue the lines of the main body onto the sleeve as per the design. Then I took the sleeve off, trued the drawn on lines and split the pattern piece into 3 different colours.

I put most of the jacket together really early on in lockdown, then it sat on the mannequin for a couple of months. This was mostly because I was trying to work out what to do with the seams. The softshell fabric that I used was not a fan of pressing, but I also didn’t want to topstitch. In my head that would have counter-acted any water resistance it had? In the end I glued every seam down using impact adhesive because that’s what I had. I did regret that because there’s a slight yellowy tinge to some of the seams on the white part of the jacket. I then decided to line the whole thing because even though the softshell has a nice fleecy backing, all of the colourblocking seams made the insides a bit messy, and I wanted the CF seam of the jacket to be finished nicely. I used a cotton remnant that I had in the stash for years as a lining for the bodice, lining the sleeves in a more slippery tencel. It does look so much more polished as a lined jacket!

Most of the issues that I had during the making process were with the ribbing. I ended up taking a big wedge out of the ribbing at the waist so that it sat closer to my body and I took a smaller wedge out of the cuffs. Annoyingly I did one cuff, adjusted it, and then abandoned the project for a few months. When I came back to it I of course forgot that I had made the other cuff smaller so had to take it out, make it smaller to match the first one and put it in again. The neckband I originally drafted as a band collar, but as soon as I sewed it in, I realised that I had put nowhere near as much neagative ease in, so that came out, had 7 inches removed from the centre back, and went back in again so that it would sit flat.

My main issues with this jacket is length. Width is all good. When I tried the jacket on before putting the cuffs in, the sleeves were too long so I shortened them by 1.5cm. Unfortunately basically the equivalent of that is taken up at the join from cuff to sleeve (as the fullness puffs it up a bit) so now the sleeves are slightly too short for my liking. It’s also slightly too cropped for jeans I think, but works perfectly with dresses. Potentially longer ribbing at the waist would have worked better as well?

All in all, it was a brilliant experiment and has already had a ton of wear. I’m so pleased with how the colour blocking worked out.

Thanks for reading!

Lauren xx