Made By A Fabricista: A Charming Jacket for Spring

Have you ever wanted to sew a jacket for yourself but were dreading all of the tailoring, dealing with a lapel/collar, and closures? What if there was a jacket pattern that was as easy to sew as a cardigan and in such a basic, versatile style that it could be worn with nearly everything?

Enter the newly-released Three's a Charm Jacket, from Decades of Style, as part of their Decades Everyday line.

Three's a Charm Jacket - Decades Everyday

The pattern company Decades of Style has been around for quite a while, producing vintage reproduction patterns from the 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's in a wide size range for home sewists. While I've liked a number of their designs over the years, I never seriously thought about sewing any of them because I was afraid that it would look like I was wearing a costume, given my casual personal style. However, last year, DoS launched a new pattern line, Decades Everyday, which incorporates vintage details into everyday-wearable styles. The two patterns that they released last year have been very well-reviewed, so as soon as they started posting teasers on Instagram for this new jacket pattern, I knew that I wanted to buy it, and I knew that I wanted to use it for my Fabricista project for February.

I apologize in advance for the poor lighting in these photos. We were waiting for a sunny day here in the Pacific Northwest, which didn't arrive by the time that this post was scheduled to run. Note that I have the jacket closed with a pin in this picture. You have the option to use a button or hook and eye closure for this pattern. None of the buttons in my stash called to me for this particular project, but on the other hand, I'm not quite ready to settle for a hook and eye yet. So...being closed with a pin (and otherwise worn open) will have to do for now.

Three's a Charm Jacket (closed)

Three's a Charm Jacket - Back

As I was getting ready to make my fabric selection for this project, I was excited to see that Fabric Mart had gotten in a shipment of stretch denims, which I figured would be perfect for an unlined jacket like this one. Being partial to floral prints, I chose this stretch denim with light blue roses on an indigo background:

Floral print stretch denim

This denim fabric is 97% cotton and 3% lycra. If you order, make sure to pre-wash, as it does soften up quite a bit in the wash. The scale of the print works well for a jacket, skirt, or a pair of floral-print jeans, which have been back in style again for the past couple of years.

I really enjoyed working on this jacket--it's about as close to an instant gratification project as you can get for a jacket. It's unlined and has facings for the center front and front hem edges. The facings are top-stitched down, so you don't have to mess with hand-stitching, if that's not your thing (it's definitely not my thing.)

If you wanted to get fancy with finishing your seam allowances, you could do a Hong Kong finish on the insides. Since I was working with denim, I opted to simply serge my seam allowances.

The "guts" of my jacket

For such a simple jacket, a surprising amount of shaping was drafted into this pattern. It includes back shoulder darts, back waist (fisheye) darts, bust darts and front waist (fisheye) darts. I added a shoulder dart as part of the Full Bust Adjustment (FBA) that I did, which required me to rotate part of the bust dart elsewhere so as to not make that dart too large.

Three's a Charm jacket - open

Overall, I think that this is a great little jacket. I'll get a lot of use out of this particular version as a transition piece going into spring, and I definitely expect to use this pattern again in the future.

~ Michelle

Happily Caffeinated