Striped Shearling Moto Jacket

I struggled to pick a name for this jacket, because its been called the zebra jacket, the prison-escape jacket and the i’d-totally-wear-this-to-burning-man jacket. All three are very good descriptions and only one of them was meant to be a compliment 😂. But hey! I really really dig this jacket, much to hubby’s dismay.

This jacket was inspired/a copy of a jacket in this year’s gap commercial worn by Janelle Monae. I really loved the jacket, but I wasn’t going to pop $800 dollars on a jacket, esp something that is a little bit on the edgy side. Sooo… I made a copy!

Perhaps not as professionally finished as a gap version, but a pretty damn good copy for a material list of under $50 dollars! First, some photos of my inspiration:

Collecting material was not a just-from-the-stash affair. I found some cotton backed fake striped leather on etsy – its actually a very nice, soft material to sew with. It also drapes beautifully. Then some cheap shearling from Joanns, my go-to slippery black cotton sateen for lining, and a very cool pull-ring resin zipper from maybe a garage sale for a pop of red. (Oh the drama on that zipper! I tried to order two similar ones so I can do the pocket in the same zipper – but two order attempts from china and the colors are always off. After 2 months of wait, i finally gave up and sewed the pocket up with the leather material).

This is the inside of the jacket – I love looking at it being hung on a hanger because that logo just looks so sharp and centered!

Oh and I still wanted to put my full handle and time stamp somewhere, so I hid it in the pocket instead:

Here is a shot where my hands are not in the pocket – I made the pocket very roomy. In fact, I can fit a small packet of opened chips in there and just eat from there – very useful when you have two little girls to run after who occassionally asks for chips.

 

The pattern is McCall7694 by Melissa Watson, with the back modified into a single piece as the more designed back would have broken those stripes. I actually had made a muslin for both a motojacket from burdastyle and this one. The fit on this one was much more suitable – I chose a smaller size (size 6) since I have narrow shoulders. The shoulder/arm was perfectly fitted to my frame (I was surprised as its a one piece sleeve), and the bodice part was perfectly the right amount of oversized I had desired.

Then I had to do a lot of cutting up of the pattern since I had to divide between the striped and shearling part. The body and arm part was easy, but the lapel part was a little hard to deal with. I had made the bottom part of the lapel with lining – so that there isn’t too much shearling/bulk sitting on the lapel. The jacket could probably use better ironing before the photo shoot so the lapel sit flatter. But after all that work I think I would have been fine with just using shearling the whole front panel.

The jacket I was trying to copy had no stripes on the shoulder – just black leather. I would have loved to copy that as well, but it was a little too daunting to sew away the white parts 😆 so I got lazy and left it as striped.

As you can tell, the jacket drapes quite well in the back. And this is my “prison jacket” shot 😆

I really quite love this jacket even though its a bit controversial. I did dare to wear it to work. But honestly it might be a little too 🦓 for work. Hubby groans a little when I wear it with him, I guess he never fantasized about being the warden. So now it’s a jacket i wear when going to dance class (in fact when I wear here is something i wear to my dance class – we dance in those boots!) or when I have kids activities. I do love the fit tremendously, and the length is oh so flattering for my height – I feel tall without high heels! So I am probably going to make another one in a more conventional fabric. (Though part of me wants to go all out again, like a vibrant floral). Anyways! Thank you for reading!!