#ardatli sews

Hokay. So this is the jacket we're talking about (far right):

A screamingly seventies long jacket, with turn-back lapels, topstiching everywhere, padded and quilted shoulder yoke, and a really interesting departmental colour insert on the lower half of the left sleeve. That was a standard part of Space: 1999 costume design; department was indicated not by colour of shirt, like in Star Trek, but in the left sleeve alone. Charcoal appears to designate Officer-in-Command, rather than purely command track.

I did my usual 'has anyone put up a tutorial for this yet' google around, and while some other Space: 1999 pieces have been done, especially some gorgeous model work, this hadn't. Next step - poking around for vintage patterns that have the same general aesthetic, rather than having to draft everything from scratch.

I was lucky enough to find this one through an Etsy vendor, and snatched it up. It's not perfect, but it's got the length and the lapels, which are the things I wanted the most.

I will have to make some modifications - the pattern is a very simple self-faced four-piece construction, and I need to turn this into a lined jacket with a solid shoulder.

The easiest way to make pattern modifications is to trace the pattern onto butcher paper, and mess around with it there.

I took Rich's measurements so that I'd know right off what would need to change. He's a bit thicker around the middle than the pattern is designed for, and he's a 44 chest rather than a 42, so it'll have to get a bit bigger in a few places.

I'm going to make a muslin first, so I'll have plenty of opportunity to mess around with the fit. Knowing this, I'm doing a realllly basic modification to the side seams; basically just straightening them out and losing all the shaping. That'll give me a couple of extra inches to play with, and I can adjust to fit Rich's body as necessary before hitting the good fabric.

There's an interesting design detail on this jacket, and that's this little collar point. Normally you'd expect to see the collar attach to a jewel neckline that comes in to the centre of the body on about a 90 degree angle to the centre front, but not so much here. So I'm going to screw around with the collar pattern and see if I can replicate that.

The one thing you never want to do when modifying a collar is to change the length of the neck line - that's the seam edge that attaches to the garment neck. It's got to be the same length on both pieces. 

So I'm going to flip the collar pattern and trace the up-curve upside down.

it'll keep the edge the same length, but point it off in the other direction. Should work. We'll see.

I'm not going to do anything to the sleeves until I see them on him. These ones come with a self-facing, which is useful; the only thing I'll need to mess with is the neat cutaway piece where the left sleeve connects to the charcoal piece. I'll do those design lines on the muslin at the fitting.

What's left? Just the yoke. The original design has solid shoulders that have been topstitched through in a way that looks like they've been quilted.

I can replicate that by adding a layer of interfacing underneath to stiffen the shoulders and topstitch through that; but first, I need a single shoulder piece rather than a shoulder seam along the top.

The way to convert a pattern is to move the seams. I tape the front and back patterns together at the balance marks on the shoulder; that creates a single big unit. Ignore the ease in the back shoulder; it's not important here.

Now I need to figure out where to start and end the yoke section. Judging by the images, the yoke is curved on the back and goes on a diagonal on the front. It sort of looks like the sleeve notches would be a decent place to start and stop them, so I'm going to just draw the lines in from there and eyeball it on the back.

I'm going to leave a lot of seam allowance both on the top of the front and back sections and the bottom of the yoke pieces when I cut everything out, so I'll have a lot of room to play around with fit.

The collar ends where the zipper begins on the original jacket, so I'll use my attempt at a new collar point as my landmark to end the yoke line at centre front.

(hard to see in this picture, so I outlined the pieces. Front yoke in red, collar in green. Old collar line in dotted green.)

Once again, I'll be able to manipulate and change all of this at the next stage if it doesn't look right, but it gives me a place to start.

Now cut apart the front and back sections (remember to make balance marks first, so you remember how they go back together!)

Lay the taped yoke piece down on the paper, and retrace it. Clean up any pointy bits or jagged lines with a curved ruler, to make sure everything lies clean and neat.

(I'm ignoring pockets entirely for the moment. I'll draw on where they need to go in the first fitting.)