Blue Bomber

 I wanted to use up the rest of the blue knit from the previous project; I had many options, and decided to go with another button-up variation on New Look 6120's bomber jacket.

And while a solid blue jacket would probably have been perfectly useful, we all know I'm going to make things more complicated, but in a way that comes easy to me, which means: appliqués

Unlike the previous exuberantly appliquéd jacket, almost everything here came from the appliqué and lace stashes--even some appliqués I had made (and used) for older projects.  I only made two specifically for this, and one of those was just cut from a print, Wonder Under fused to the back, fused to the jacket, then zigzagged around. The other one has a second layer, but isn't anywhere near the involvement level of some of the cat appliqués.

I took some liberties with the color range of the buttons--they're more ivory and dark brown than white and black like the appliqués--but it works at a glance.  The buttonholes were made with the vintage buttonholer attachment, the buttons were sewn on with the machine, and everything behaved.

I considered using a variety of buttons, but decided against it because, even though they would be against the solid blue background and so easy to see when buttoned, the side they'd be sewn to has appliqués, and the button variety would potentially be lost against that.

As usual, I went into this with very little planning (and a whole lot of Wonder Under)

I decided to use many things I had been saving for no real reason.

I'm still not sure if this project was a good idea, coherently crafted, but it did feel nice to clear out a little space in my appliqué box.

Of course there are pockets, although the jacket is short enough that putting a hand into one of those pockets required an extreme elbow angle.

The matching appliqués on the sleeves were originally on the sleeves of a shirt I thrifted.  They may look like venise lace at a glance, but they are so, so low quality.  There were a few areas where I zigzagged disconnected bits back to some semblance of 'together again.'

But they do look cool.

The  feature appliqués on the back were gifts, a set of three (the third is the fence on the front) made by Heritage Lace, ©2007 (Heritage Lace is sill around, and they do have Halloween-themed lace items, but not these any more.)

The shapes made on the inside by the zigzag stitches amused me.

I forgot to serge the edge of the pockets, but all the serging here is purely decorative--I considered installing the left needle and doing construction on the serger, but, one, this was cut with 5/8" seam allowances and the way the pockets are made meant I needed something like precision on the side seams that I didn't feel like I could achieve with the serger, and, two, I still don't quite trust my serger after working on it last weekend.  It seemed fine with just the one needle today, but I didn't go full speed much, if at all.

I absolutely did not need another jacket, but that statement could be appended to every jacket I make, as well as jackets in the future.