Procrastinated Green v2.0

Two-and-two-thirds years ago, I sewed this jacket for the kiddo

Despite his lukewarm reaction when presented with it, he ended up wearing it constantly.  It also acquired a lot more pins, which made a lot of holes in the front, which I patched with decorative appliqués, reinforced the front pieces with interfacing, and eventually added a layer of woven cotton for more strength.

Seams popped, got re-sewn, and popped in different places.  I stopped caring if the thread even vaguely matched.  Pills formed, betraying the high synthetic fiber content.  The child's arms grew longer than the sleeves could respectably cover.  Paint wore off of the zipper pull.

The only thing that could convince him to stop wearing it was nasty hot weather, so he hasn't been inclined to wear it for a few months, so I was looking for suitable cloth to use to make a replacement.  Happily, I blundered into a few yards of just-about-the-same-shade green cloth in a visit to a thrift store about a month ago (seen here under the old jacket)

I also blundered across this in a thrift store at some point

Yeah, there's no front zipper, but there's a front seam and it goes down to size XS, so it's close enough, and here we are

This cloth makes no pretense about trying to convince you that it contains anything like a natural fiber, which means the extra-shininess needed more awareness of nap, which is why the shoulder areas of the sleeves, where the cloth is at an angle to everything else, look darker. 

I decided to add the interfaced reinforcement cotton as this was being constructed

although I still expect the pins to make holes, at least it should take a bit longer to get to that point.

It also meant that I had to get creative about when the zipper was installed, and how to treat the intersection of the waistband and the front opening, and the results are clunky because I didn't trim enough of the seam allowances, but there are no raw edges so my goal was achieved

(yeah, didn't have any green zippers of suitable length on hand this time)

I made sure the waistband seams would line up by sewing one side with the zipper closed, then marking on the other side of the zipper tape where the seam should be

  then unzipping it so the other side could be sewn by itself, making sure to securely pin the seam allowance at that marked spot.

The waistband was sewn to the jacket flat, with a seam-allowance's worth sticking out on both opening edges, then folded with right sides together, and the inside seam allowance turned in, then the whole thing turned right-side-out and the top of the inner part folded and pinned and stitched-in-ditch from the outside.  It was awkward to sew and awkward to see in some places, but...um...it's done.  And there are no exposed seam allowances this way, for whatever that's worth.

You might notice that odd seam on the back, just above the waistband.  Yeah.  I accidentally cut the back too short--even adult XS is a bit long for a not-quite-eleven-year-old, so everything had to be shortened.  I measured his arms to figure out how long the sleeves should be, and I used the available zipper length to determine how long the front should be, and somehow I incorrectly transferred that length reduction to the back, buuuut blithely assumed I had done it correctly and didn't figure it out until I was ready to sew the side seams.  I had been pushing myself through this project anyway and really didn't like the idea of picking out the seams + two rows of top stitching on each back sleeve seam.  I didn't want to just sew the additional length, either--the seam alone would look weird, I thought.

I considered cutting the back shorter and adding a big contrast, maybe using the cotton print on the inside

but I wasn't sure if the kiddo would go for that.

Then I remembered something that had been in the huge assortment of fabric and notions brought by the friend, and I asked the kiddo what he thought of having that on the back and got a big bouncy nod.

So.

Yes, it's reflective.

I mean, not that he ever goes outside after dark, but, if he does, he'll shine.

I used the seam from adding the extra length as the guide for sewing the reflective tape, and I forgot to take a detail picture of that. You can kinda see it in the pocket picture.

An aside: neither orange nor green appear in that print.

Here you can see the shoulder stitching that I did not want to pick out--I wouldn't've minded re-sewing it, but, picking it out?  Ew, no.

I did the same "turn the seam allowance and sew it down" approach to the hood as I did in the first green jacket, but I rushed it and it's lumpy

At that point I just wanted it done.  And there's a reason there are no pictures of the top stitching on the inside of the neckline seam allowance.

However.

It's done.

Mostly.

There's still plenty of space to add more pins.