Monday, August 4, 2008

Superman Jacket


I found this incredible Superman sheet at Goodwill about 6 months ago. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with it when I bought it, except make something for my cousin who lives and breathes Superman. Seriously, the guy has about 4 tattoos of Superman and related things and that's a rough estimate. As soon as I left, it hit me that I should do a raglan hoodie jacket. He lives in Tennessee and it gets cold there and it would showcase the Superman graphic perfectly. So I searched high and low for an appropriate jacket pattern and found Kwik Sew 1367, an out of print pattern from the 80's I believe, on ebay soon after.

I chose to do view B which is the guy in the turquoise jacket, but I altered the pattern so that the pocket holes started on the side of the stomach rather than the side seams. That just looked awkward and weird to me. I also angled the pockets so that things wouldn't fall out of them, like your pocket litter does on regular RTW hoodies. Boy, does that drive me nuts! I can't tell you how many things I've dropped in the toilet because of that (yeah, eww!).

After consulting him on it, he wanted blue arms, so it would be like Superman's outfit, and a red hood to resemble Superman's cape. I decided to make the pockets blue as well because more Superman would just be too busy on the front. The blue pockets give it a little breather.

I'm not finished yet on the jacket because I ran out of thread and needed to pick some up. I lucked out because JoAnn's is having a 50% off sale on Coats and Clark XP brand thread (which I didn't know about going in there).

I did line it with flannel. I actually dyed it blue after testing a batch a while ago. The larger pieces came out a lot lighter than the test pieces, and mottled looking at that. But since it's inside and it kind of looks like the sky, which goes with the Superman fabric, I kept it as is. I know that the flannel will likely make getting it on and off slightly difficult, but I explained that to my cousin who wanted the flannel anyways. The flannel is a queen sized blanket I found for probably under $3 at some thrift store or another.

I had to baste ALL the flannel to the outside fabric to keep it secure. In planning this, I didn't realize that I would have to do that. But, it makes for more precise construction. Sometimes the flannel was larger than the outer fabric and I'd have to trim it.

I'll post more about the details once it's completed!

1 comment:

  1. Tom Welling clothing

    Visiting your Blog today. Thanks for this information. Pleased for this superman costume

    ReplyDelete