Lutterloh, Linen, Beads and Bling, A Birthday Jacket

Isn’t this the cutest jacket?

Harking back to the 60s a fringed jacket.

I love the soft waterfall front, and the self -fringe. I had my eye on this the minute this Lutterloh supplement arrived at my door.

When the Pattern Review wardrobe contest was announced, I decided this would be one of the two toppers required.

The fringed edges appealed to me. Harking back to the days when we scandalized our parents by cutting off perfectly good jeans and making shorts with raw fringed hems. We also sang Beach Boys and Beatles songs and worried our parents.

That look was awfully tame when you consider what kind of denim whiffs of fabric pass for shorts today. And with a price tag in reverse relation to the skimpiness of the panties, er, shorts.

Back to the jacket.

I have close to 10 meters of a lovely, icy green linen. As I was laying it out, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the entire selvedge was already fringed.

“Aha!”, said I! “The work is nicely done.”

Well not so fast there sister. Just look at what the jacket looks like adorned with the self-fringe…

Like a rag. Like a dingy rag.

That wasn’t happenin’ for me. So I took it all off and went searching through my stash of trims and found  two packages of silk and bead trim. The silk fringe is an exact match to the linen. And the beads have some orange in them, and they sparkle just enough.

Oh happy day!

I had purchased the trim in a fabric store in Vancouver, B.C. while visiting friends. I was sure that the package said “3 meters” As it turned out, the package read 3 FEET. So I only had enough for the sleeves and bottom hem.

But what a lovely match. And the pants I was making to go with the jacket are peach with little pineapples embroidered on.

What a lovely tie-in of colors.

But now the collar looked awfully plain and naked.

I riffled through my trim drawer again and found this sunburst iron on. It is two colors of bronze and was just perfect with the orange cowl top and peach pineapple pants.

Doesn’t it look just perfect?

I pinned the applique in place and let the jacket hang for a day to make sure I was happy with the additional bling.

I still loved it in the morning.

So we got engaged.

I heated up the iron, followed the instructions. And voila! A disaster.

Half of the tiny beads came off with the backing, another quarter of the shiny tiny bits, adhered to nothing and went flying to the floor.

Did I mention that my Chihuahua, Coco-Nut Ibrahim Garcia loves plastic? He is addicted to it.

He heard the titillating sounds of plastic meeting floor and came in to see what he could scoop up. With a loud “no!” and the stamp of my foot, I sent him skittering out the door.

So in 24 hours I would be joining friends for my birthday breakfast. What to do with my ruined jacket? The glue adhered nicely and the shape of the starburst was forever imprinted on my lapel.

I took my serger tweezers, a glue stick and marshaled all of my limited patience and painstakingly attached as many of the little spheres that:

1. I could find
2. I was willing to try to stick back on.

Anyway, I self-lined the jacket. I bagged it, but left the entire hem open so that I could carefully top stitch the two layer together and ensure that the fringe was placed properly.

This being a Lutterloh pattern, the fit is right on. It drapes beautifully and is on trend.
Everyone that has seen me wearing it loves the jacket. No one seems to notice that some of the starburst design is just glue spots!

If I make this again, I will make it from a lightweight denim it fringes so beautifully) or a home dec fabric. This would require a Hong Kong finish or a tight sergeing to finish the seams.

Note, if you do not line this, you will have to make quite a wide facing so the waterfall edge does not show the wrong side of the fabric. After analyzing the pattern, and wanting to have the fringe effect, I decided to self-line the jacket.

On the other hand, if you have a fabric with an interesting wrong side, don’t face it. But it must be a crisp fabric that can hold the shape of the waterfall.

It was a windy day, and we had just spent two hours having a long, relaxing breakfast, so my Beloved was not in the best frame of mind to do a photo shoot.

The only photo I have of the entire outfit is not the best, hair-wise.  The pants shrunk in their first washing (yes, I did prewash and dry the fabric). So there is no way to take new photos of the entire outfit.

But the jacket is cute, yes?