Leather Vest

We had a great weekend.  Lots of things done and a good hand applique class from Karen Kay Buckley.  Today is WD's 7th birthday, so a good meal from Kopps tonight!

   Blogging is a funny thing.  Sometimes I feel like I don't know what to post, and other times, like this week, I've got tons.  Anyway, I wanted to finish up the Renaissance Faire Costumes so we can move on to other things.  Today I'll talk about the vest and tomorrow a bit about my experiences sewing with leather.

 The Inspiration.  Apparently Aragorn's is Brown. Good thing we're not going for literal interpretation here.

 The final product.

 It started life as a 3X Men's Leather Jacket with zip out lining.  I took out all the lining and took off the sleeves.  The most interesting thing I discovered, is that  the leather jacket was interfaced just as much, if not more than a fabric jacket would be.

 I also removed the pockets, and hammered out the snaps.  This is the jacket stripped down.  This is where I just started winging it.  I had Mr. Riley try it on, and it was WAY too big.  I ended up taking out panels on each side of the jacket.  This cinched up the vest and it was fitting much better, but not quite meeting in the front, then.  So I added two strips, almost facings to help it meet in the front.

 I sewed patches over where the pockets had been.  I would like to do a bit more to these, so they aren't so obviously patches!

 I added leather loops to put lacing through for ties.

 I also added the original collar back on. I also finished any exposed edges.  This isn't entirely necessary with leather, but because they had been finished previously, they already had the roll-over tendency, not to mention previous stitching holes.

Once I was finished doing all the putting together, Mr. Riley spent some time 'distressing' it.  He rubbed it with both alcohol and acetone to get the shiny off.  He used some sand paper to make it look more worn.  The thing that ultimately did it, though, was putting it in the sand box sand and walking and jumping on it.  It rubbed in the dirt, roughed it up and made it look more worn.