Welcome back, if you follow me on Instagram and Facebook you'll be familiar with some of these pictures.Today I'll be talking about one of my favorite pieces every to come from my studio, a black Matadore Jacket.
This beautiful jacket was inspired by this B. Viveros painting, I know Pinterest loves me, the reason being it sent me this picture. Which I just had to recreate, though I'm not sure that I did his work justice.
I started with the Burda pattern 7303 as my base using a black suiting (Unknown Fiber Content, Unknown Origin) the fabric was given to me by my maternal Grandmother who was always a huge supporter of my sewing career being a very accomplished seamstress as well.
I cropped the jacket so it would hit just above my waist assembling it according to pattern instructions, minus the shoulder pads, yes its fully lined. Then came the challenge of finding all the tassels and trim that would essentially "make" the jacket.
Around the neck I used a gold gimp braiding (All braiding and tassels used came from Joann's) The same gimp was also used on the front of the jacket on top of the gold fringe. I also used a scalloped braiding along the front of the jacket, you can see that I used it to make some interesting shapes note a triangle at each shoulder and some loops along the front. If you look at the epaulets you'll see a curly fringe, I got that out of the home decor section of Joann's and the tassels were attached to that. I had to first remove them then sew them onto the gold fringe, under the gimp. Wondering why they look so perfect? That's because I trimmed each one so they would be identical. On the base of the jacket and around the sleeve I used a sequined gimp braiding, the sequins being a fig color.
The hardest part of this was the epaulets which I'm not entirely sure I could recreate even if I wanted to. I would draw the shape out, pin it to the jacket and walk around, take it off and do it again until I found the shape and size I was looking for. Remember this was without trim, so I had to use my imagination. Once I got the shape I cut it out of both fabric and batting, the went inside the epaulet and is what gives it that puffy look. I stitched my now tasseless trim on the outside edge, and added a long tassel to the tip on both the front and back of the epaulet. The circles you see on them are actually more of that Fig sequined gimp knotted and sewn onto the epaulet.
I had pretty much planned to be done with the jacket at this point but I felt like something was missing.
I wasn't looking for the lace trim along the sleeve, but when I came upon it I knew it was exactly what my jacket needed (purchased from Walmart) because I hadn't planned for it, I didn't know how much I would need and their was very little on the spool so I just took what they had and hoped for the best. There wasn't enough fro it to go all the way down both arms, so I just cut it in half fitted it on a voila!
I wish I had a picture of the back of this jacket, I didn't even notice that I'd forgotten to take on until that evening as I went back through to edit these :(
The back its fairly simple, it too seemed plain so I attached a piece of sequin lace to the center back. Its also black making it very subtle I'm not sure it would have even shown up on camera. The I took more of the sequin gimp in gold instead of fig and sewed it along the princess seams.
Check back next week for a new outfit and follow me on instagram @MadsenCreations or Facebook: Madsen Creations by Rachel Madsen to all the new things I'm making!