Jacket Sewing Tips

Recently I published a Patternmaking Guide on Fitted Jackets, so this was a perfect excuse to prepare a jacket sewing tutorial, too!

I’ve included the most common jacket details: notch collar, bound buttonholes, bagged lining, and inserting shoulder pads. Naturally, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert jacket tailor and there’s plenty of more to sewing jackets than what’s included here, but I’m sharing what I do know. 🙂

You can share links to jacket tutorials and book recommendations in the comments!

As a sample, I made the cropped jacket present in this e-guide. If you’re interested in learning how to draft jacket patterns, definitely check this guide out.

Materials

My favorite material for making a jacket is wool. There are different types of wool, but for this project I chose a lightweight wool. After all, a cropped jacket is anyways not going to be a winter jacket.

Notice that you could choose to make the facing and upper collar in a different fabric like I did with my trench coat.

Lining for jackets is not as lightweight as that for dresses. In the end, you can choose other materials as well, such as satin, or even lightweight cotton. For my jacket, I picked a light grey midweight shiny lining fabric.

You’ll also need interfacing. I have mentioned many times how I can’t stand the fusible interfacing. But it’s been a while since the last time I used one, so I felt ready to tackle this material again.

This time I decided to buy the interfacing in a shop where professional tailors get their materials in case it’s any better. This place is called Pinotti, in case you happen to be in Italy. They have a large variety of different interfacings:

In addition, you’ll be inserting shoulder pads and sleeve heads. The sleeve head is a strip of batting. I once bought a whole metre of this batting and it’s going to last for years! They also sell ready-made sleeve heads with interfacing attached, but I’ve never used those.

Then of course you’ll need buttons, and possibly stay tape.

What to Interface

You should interface all the collar pieces and facing pieces.

In addition, you can fuse a strip of interfacing to cover the hems. This gives them a crispier look and they will turn more smoothly. Use a soft interfacing.

The hemline interfacing should cover the area to be folded and also the area where the hem will be hand stitched. So, if you have a 4cm (1 5/8″) high hem allowance, cut at least 6cm (2 3/8″) high interfacing and fuse it so that it arrives about 1cm (3/8″) above where it will be hand stitched. It doesn’t need to cover the whole hem allowance though. Just enough to go over the fold.

The Buttonholes

There are several ways to make buttonholes for your jacket. Many sewing machines even have different kinds of buttonholes available. You can also sew them by hand. The buttonholes are sewn on the right side (for women’s jackets).

My sample jacket doesn’t have buttons, so I thought I’d show you how to make bound buttonholes instead!

Bound buttonholes are like tiny welt pockets.

If you’ve sewn welt pockets before, you know that the welt piece is a rectangle. In this case the width should be slightly more than that of the button. Add a seam allowance to both ends. You can make a test buttonhole to ensure that the size works.

The height of the welt is twice the final height plus seam allowance on both sides, because the welts will be folded in half.

In the case of normal buttonholes, you can sew them when the rest of the jacket is done. But with bound buttonholes, it’s best to prepare them in the beginning, when the jacket front piece hasn’t been attached to the other bodice pieces yet. It’s easier this way, and in case you make a mistake, you just need to cut a new front piece.

Fuse pieces of interfacing on the wrong side of the jacket front piece, around the areas where the buttonholes will be sewn.

These pictures are from a coat tutorial I published almost two years ago.

I interfaced a rectangle wide enough to cover all the little welts. My buttons were 2,7cm (~1″) wide, which meant that the buttonhole would be 3cm (1 1/8″) wide, plus seam allowance on both sides.

Then I cut the pieces and pressed them in half.

In the picture you can see also the moment before sewing the ”welts”: they are pinned onto the right side of the jacket front piece, raw edges pointing towards the center. You sew them like welt pockets, then slash the fabric in the center so that you’re able to pull the welts to the wrong side, and press. Finally, you stitch the little triangles at the short ends to the welts’ seam allowance. This will stabilize the buttonhole.

Later, when the jacket facing has been attached, you then finish the wrong side of the buttonholes.

Baste the two layers of the button stand (jacket front + facing) together all around the buttonhole. Mark the corners with pins, so that you can accurately cut a hole in the facing layer.

Then fold all the edges under and handstitch in place.

And the Pockets?

The sample jacket doesn’t have pockets either, but jackets usually have welt pockets, either with or without flaps. You can find instructions to both in my welt pocket tutorial.

Just like the bound buttonholes, also pockets should be among the first things you sew. Sometimes you might need to stitch the side seam first, if the pocket extends over the seam.

The Collar and Lapel

Next up in my jacket sewing tutorial, is the notched collar.

Here are the collar and lapel pieces: the upper collar piece cut on the fold, 2 undercollar pieces cut on the bias, and 2 front facing pieces. You might also have a back facing piece.

They are all interfaced.

Lapel

To make the lapel turn nicely, you can handstitch a stay tape along the roll line like I did with my winter coat. Even though this is a shawl collar, the notched collar lapel can be staytaped in the same way. The idea is to measure the roll line and then cut a stay tape that is 0.5cm (1/4”) shorter.

Stitch it so that the stitches won’t show on the right side. The interfacing will help you with that! This stitch is called catch stitch.

But back to this collar!

1. Sew the facing to the jacket front piece right sides together, starting from the collar notch. Sew also part of the hem (until the point where the narrow seam allowance ends). Then trim around the lapel tip and turn the right side out.

2. Press. As the facing should be slightly wider around the lapel, you’ll be able to press the seam a few millimeters towards the front piece in this area so that it will remain hidden.

Collar

1. Sew the two undercollar pieces together at the c-back. Press the seam allowance open.

2. Pin the upper and undercollar pieces right sides together along their outer edge. Sew. The seam allowance should be about 0.7cm (1/4”).

3. Trim around the collar tips. If your collar has a larger seam allowance than 0.7cm, trim it. To reduce bulk, you can also trim one layer of the seam allowance in half, leaving just 3-4mm.

4. Turn the right side out and press.

Here you can see how the collar seam remains hidden because the upper collar is slightly larger than the undercollar.

Now you have the lapel and the collar ready. Next, we’ll attach the collar to the jacket neckline. But to do that, we need to have a complete neckline first.

So, sew the rest of the jacket bodice pieces together and complete the bodice lining, too. Then attach the lining to the facing edge and close the shoulder seams.

By the way, if you have a back facing, it’s a good idea to attach it on top of the back lining. (Of course, if you haven’t drafted the pattern yourself, you can’t decide.)

The undercollar will be attached to the jacket’s main layer and the upper collar to the facing/lining layer.

Start pinning at the collar notch, align the shoulder notches with the shoulder seams, and the c-back notch with the c-back seam. Your collar might also have ease, so that means a few extra notches to match.

Once you’ve sewn both sides of the collar, trim some of the seam allowance around the collar notch to reduce bulk.

Press the seams. With lightweight materials you can press all the seam allowances towards the collar. Otherwise you can press half of the seam allowance towards the collar and half towards the jacket. This is another way to reduce bulk.

The final step for the collar is to unite the two layers by stitching along the collar seam. The stitches must remain invisible, so you must stitch exactly inside the previous seam.

At this point you have two choices: either machine stitch or hand stitch. I always go for hand stitching as it’s quite difficult to get both layers to line up perfectly.

Keep the seam allowances folded in the correct direction as you go: inside or outside the collar. Stitch around the whole neckline.

Here’s the jacket bodice with the collar ready.

The Jacket Sleeve

Sew the upper and undersleeve pieces together. Press the seam allowances towards the undersleeve.

The two-piece sleeves are attached in the same way as normal sleeves, with gathering stitches sewn between the armhole notches. You just have a few more notches to match. Notice that the sleeve’s front seam isn’t supposed to match with the jacket’s side seam.

Sew and attach a sleeve both to the main layer and the lining.

When sewing a lined jacket, the lining is attached to the main layer’s hem allowance. However, the lining has some vertical ease, so it’s not holding the main layer’s hem allowance up. This means that you need to hem the jacket by hand after having attached the lining.

Same goes both for the sleeve hem and the jacket hem.

1. Start by pressing and basting the main layer’s hem allowance. Baste somewhere in the center of the hem allowance so that you have room to sew the lining.

2. Place the sleeve lining inside the main layer sleeve, the way it’s going to be when the jacket is ready. Ensure that you match the sleeve seams and that the lining is not twisted.

Pick one of the seams and fold the right sides of the hems together at this position, matching the seams. You can add a pin if you want. Then, reach inside the sleeve between the two layers and grab both hemlines. Pull them out still holding the right sides together. This way you should be able to complete pinning the two hemlines together correctly. It might be confusing otherwise.

The lining and the main layer sleeve hems will be sewn at 1cm (3/8”), right sides together.

3. While the sleeve is still wrong side out, hand stitch the hem in place with invisible stitches. If you have an interfacing at the hem, this will be easy.

Then pull the right side out and place the sleeve hem inside the main layer again. Remove the basting.

Do the other sleeve in the same way.

Attach the sleeve lining to the main layer under the arm by hand stitching loosely. Use the seam allowance so that the stitches remain invisible on the right side.

The Shoulder Pads and Sleeve Heads

The jacket pattern has usually been drafted to contain shoulder pads. You can also add sleeve heads, which is this fluffy, soft padding material that creates nice looking, rounded sleeve seams.

To cut the sleeve head, calculate the distance between the front- and (lower) back sleeve notches. The height is 4cm (1 5/8″) which will be folded in half.

As the jacket is lined, you can use these kinds of ”un-finished” shoulder pads; they will remain hidden inside.

The shoulder pad and sleeve head will be attached by hand on both sides of the seam allowance around the armscye. The shoulder pad goes on the bodice side and the sleeve head on the sleeve side. The sleeve seam will remain sandwiched in the middle.

Center the shoulder pad at the shoulder seam. Some shoulder pads have a notch for the shoulder position.

Fold the sleeve head in half as shown, and pin it between the armhole notches.

When stitching, leave the stitches loose enough so that they don’t flatten the height of the shoulder pad.

Finally, attach the opposite side of the shoulder pad to the shoulder seam with loose stitches.

Here you can see the final, rounded look at the shoulder tip.

Jacket Hem

When the rest of the jacket is ready, you can finish by closing the hemline. Baste first, like you did with the sleeves.

Then turn the wrong side out so that you’ll be able to pin the hemlines of the lining and the main layer right sides together. At this point you have this strange-looking lump of fabric. (1.)

2. Stitch at 1cm (3/8″). Remember to leave an opening around the c-back seam, so that you’ll be able to turn the right side out. Hem by hand stitching, and then turn the right side out by pulling the jacket out through the opening.

Pin and close the opening with hand stitches. Remove the basting.

The lining should create a little fold above the jacket hemline because of the vertical ease.

Here’s the finished jacket. I ended up interfacing part of the undersleeve, too, because the fabric was too lightweight to sustain the sleeve shape. This solution seemed to work great. Unfortunately my dressform doesn’t have arms, so the sleeves remain empty. I’ll add a posing picture later! 😀

Related Posts

• 
  About Making my Winter Coat
• 
  How to Sew Different Types of Collars
• 
  How to construct a trench coat, pt 2
• 
  Making a Cropped Winter Coat
• 
  Welt pocket tutorial