Completed: Crazy Aztec Waver Jacket

Well, my winter jacket is ready for this year! Guess I can cross that one off the list!

Before we get too deep into this post, I have to warn you – I took a LOT of photos of this jacket. It’s a big project and one that I’m especially proud of. I am not even sorry that you’ll have to look at like 40 pictures of it now. Yep.

As I mentioned in my Fall/Winter sewing plans, I’ve been collecting all the bits and pieces to make this jacket for a couple of months now (PROTIP: Making a coat can get expensive when you start buying all the crap that goes into it, but you can make the cost hurt a lot less by buying everything in phases 🙂 HAHA). I’m pretty set on the heavy winter coat front – my Vogue coat is still serving me well nearly 2 years later, and the Ralph Rucci knock-off is a wonderful piece to wear when I’m dressed up. My wardrobe does have a small gap in lightweight jackets – my black and gold bomber jacket, while awesome, is a bit short to really be cozy, and my orange Minoru jacket is really better suited for the super mild spring temperatures as it’s really not that warm (it’s just cotton with a poly lining, after all)! What I needed was a longer jacket, preferably one with a hood. I always miss having a hood.

The Papercut Patterns Waver Jacket was my pattern choice – it’s a really cool, casual style and I liked that it included a hood, as well as the waist-cinching drawstring. This pattern is pretty similar to the Sewaholic Minoru, although without all the additional gathering nor the hood-stashing wide collar. I think the style of the Minoru looks pretty good on me, so I knew the Waver would as well. I also found an eerily similar replica (with set-in sleeves rather than raglan) at the GAP a few months ago, so I was able to try it on and see what I thought before I started making muslins. I love it when things work out that way!

I cut the size XS, which is my usual size with Papercut. I like that the jacket has some shape, but there’s still enough room in there for me to pile a sweater on underneath (which is about the max layer of clothing I’d have on if the weather was appropriate for a jacket like this!). My muslin revealed that I didn’t need to make any fitting changes, other than shorten the sleeves about 1cm (ooh, look at me, sounding all international and shit).

Of course, the fabric really makes the jacket! This cool navy Aztec virgin wool is from Mood Fabrics, and I’ve had a big piece squirreled away in my stash for months. It’s a pretty lightweight wool, which is perfect for my needs, and suitable for this pattern. I love all the colors in the print! Trying to cut those pattern pieces to match all the bold, colorful lines was a little bit of a struggle, but I made it work. I lined the jacket with English blue silk charmeuse (the exact one that I used appears to be sold out at this point, sorry!). I really did agonize for a long time over what color lining to include – the fun side of me loves contrast linings, but the boring side of me thinks it makes things look a little cheap (except that red lining in my plaid Vogue coat; I have no regrets about that one!). I actually like a more subdued lining, and prefer the contrast in the form of texture, not color. So I went with English blue, which perfectly matches the navy in the wool.

I didn’t do a lot of crazy tailoring with this coat – it was actually a fairly simple project. I did add a back stay (made of medium-weight muslin and using this tutorial from Sewaholic) to the back to keep it from stretching out, and I catch-stitched all the wool seam allowances down so that they’d stay flat with wear (similar to this, but without any of that horsehair interfacing. This is a casual coat that doesn’t need heavy tailoring!). There’s no padstitching in this project, or bound button holes. While I LOVE big projects with lots of interior details, not every project has to be couture-worthy. Especially if it’s a simple jacket.

ha! Bet you didn’t notice those big patch pockets, did you? I cut those so they are hidden in plain sight right on the front of the coat. Good thing I have radar fingers, otherwise I’d never be able to find them when my hands get cold.

I also added inseam pockets (not included in the pattern, but as easy as stealing a pocket piece from another pattern and popping it into the side seams as you are sewing it up!), sewn in silk charmeuse, along the side seams. The wind blowing in my hair for this photo is an added bonus, and you are welcome for that.

The hood was a big selling point for this pattern! I love jackets with hoods, but I never really come across jacket patterns with hoods that I actually like. It’s nice to have a hood for rain and light snow, so I’m glad this pattern has a hood! It’s a nice 3 piece hood, too, so it stays on your head without squishing it, and stays put (and it’s big enough to cover my head even when my hair is pulled up in a bun!). The pattern calls for lining the hood with self lining (aka the jacket fabric), but I was afraid that wool would give me weird hat head, so I lined the hood with more silk charmeuse instead. I figured, they make pillowcases out of silk, so hood lining can’t be too far off… right?

As you can see, I also added faux fur around the hood. Yeehaw! I love this detail in coats, and I was keen to add it to this coat as well. This black and white faux fur from Mood is really nice stuff – it’s super soft and almost feels like real fur. It’s certainly way better quality than any other faux fur I’ve sewn. This doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to sew – I still had fur flying everywhere as I cut it, etc etc – but the payoff is worth it!

What you can’t see in these photos is that the fur is actually removable – just in case I change my mind and want it off, it won’t be difficult to remove it (I doubt that will happen, but I like having options!). I sewed the fur trim the same way you’d make a fur collar, loosely following this tutorial from Casey, although I did not add any interfacing as my fur has a pretty heavy backing as-is.

I sewed black twill tape around the edges and then folded it to the inside, catch-stitching everything down securely.

Then I laid my silk charmeuse lining on top, covering all the insides and attaching the folded edge of the lining to the twill tape on the fur, using teeny hand stitches. The fur trim was then attached to the perimeter of the hood, using invisible hand stitches. I briefly considered using snaps or buttons+loops, but decided that I didn’t want anything to show when the fur was removed. The stitches will be easy to pull out if I need to take the fur off, but you can’t see them when the fur is on, either. You can see what the jacket looks like without the fur here, if you’re interested!

Here’s that blue lining! You can see another change I made to the jacket – instead of using a drawstring to cinch the waist, I added wide elastic. This was mostly due to comfort – elastic isn’t constricting like a rigid draw string is – plus I think it looks better on me. I did have to change up the order of construction a bit to get this to work. First I bagged the lining as usual (per the pattern instructions). I left off the drawstring channel pattern piece and instead sewed through all the layers of the wool and lining to make a channel (similar to the construction of the Minoru), then fed the elastic through that and tacked down the ends.

I also added a little leather tab to the back of the neck, so I can hang the coat more easily (or from my finger haha).

I actually like this way this coat looks unbuttoned, which is a first for me!

I do wish that I had paid more attention to my pattern-matching on the front of the coat, so that the design would continue uninterrupted. Oh well! It still turned out pretty cool despite that mishap, and there are triangles down the center front instead. I’m ok with that!

Now for a buttload of dressform and flat pictures:

The buttons are antique glass buttons that I bought at the flea market earlier this summer. Love them so much! That guy has the best buttons.

My favorite part!! The leather tab was an idea I took from an old American Eagle coat – I just cut a strip of heavy leather, rounded the ends, and punched holes so I could run stitches through it. And the woven label is from Wunderlabel – isn’t that the best finishing touch? I had a hard time deciding what mine should say – I wanted it to say Made in Nashville, but I don’t really live in Nashville anymore (I mean, we are close enough but I’m a huge weirdo/stickler about that sort of thing!), so The South works 😉 Anyway, this was my first experience with Wunderlabel – I’ll have more of a review up in the future after I’ve used more of the labels. But in the meantime, I’m sewing them on everything!

While I certainly did not push myself to hurry and finish this project, I did wrap things up pretty quickly! I think it took about a week to get everything sewn up, after making the muslin and cutting the fabric. I’m glad I finished it, too, because I think it’ll come in handy when I’m in NYC in a couple of weeks. Hell, it’s already starting to get cold here – I will probably be able to wear it later this week! 🙂

Note: The fabric for this jacket was purchased with my allowance for the Mood Sewing Network (over a period of months, I might add! 🙂 ). Pattern was given to me as a gift. All comments on this blog post 100% mine, however!

Tags: coat, completed, jacket, papercut patterns, tailoring, waver jacket, wool