Refashion Friday Striped Jacket Refashion

Happy Saturday! (I know it's supposed to be Refashion Friday but my photo shoot didn't work out so we are a day late!) I hope everyone is safe and healthy in these uneasy times. Drew has been working from home for about 8 days and while it isn't always easy to have us both working from home I am fortunate his job allows him to be isolating with me.

I haven't been thrifting in a while, and within the past few weeks, I've seen most chain thrift stores shutting their doors, so while there should be no "in person" thrifting, this is a great opportunity to look through your wardrobe or a relatives wardrobe and refashion what you already have!

This week's refashion was a simple one, but had a pretty big result! First, a little background on how this jacket came into my possession. A few weeks ago, my parent's sold their farm (and if you've been reading this blog for awhile, you'll know it's where I used to work!) and had to do some downsizing. Since my mom no longer had to work the farm, she didn't have a need for a lot of her clothes so her wardrobe got cleaned out. The piece I took with me was one of her old jackets! It has a lot of stains, but I love the style and have been obsessing over stripes lately, so I thought it would be a great wardrobe addition.

I really didn't want to change much on this piece. The pockets are awesome, and I love the buttons detailing. All I really needed was a sleeve resize and to make the cut a little less boxy. This jacket is a Petite Petite, the smallest petite size, so this piece is meant to be boxy.  I really love the style, but usually can't pull it off.

First step was to remove the sleeves and cut the new armhole. The shoulder seam had to come up around 2" and from that point I reshaped the armhole and re-attached the sleeves. Whenever I cut a new armhole, it is always a little intimidating because I don't want to cut too far. Something to remember is to leave enough room for a seam allowance!

If your sleeve length already fits well, your sleeve will be re-attached shorter. For this piece, I let out the hem on the sleeve cuff to make the sleeve longer. It didn't look the best, but I had some extra black canvas so I made new sleeve cuffs.

To give a little extra fit to the jacket, I added a drawstring waist. It's a really simple addition that gives a garment such a cute look. I cut black canvas 2 1/4" x the waist length of my jacket. I stitched a buttonhole on each side where the cording would come out of the waist. Then I turned the edges of the canvas in 1/4" and stitched the band on the inside of my jacket waist. Stitch the ends of the band a little further past the buttonholes to enclose everything.

I am so happy with this transformation, and happy I can give this jacket a new life with me. I'm going to do a little experimenting to see if I can get some of the bigger stains out of the jacket but because of the ticking stripes, you can't see the stains unless you are right on top of them.

There's a video on my IGTV showing the steps to this refashion, and if you want to do a similar refashion - check it out!

A lot of my transformations lately haven't been 'extreme' refashions because I'm still getting all my motivation and inspiration back. But I really love doing these smaller projects because they are quick, pretty easy and really fun to share. I love full refashions, but I love sharing any projects to inspire others who want to try out refashioning. I hope you are inspired to Stay Home & Sew!