As I said in the last post, the Desperately Seeking Susan jacket gave me a whole lot of ideas for embellishing other jackets. At first, I thought I would do an op shop search to find the jacket, but I really don’t need more jackets. Then I pondered whether any of my exisiting jackets would be suitable, and immediately I thought of this one:

It’s a vintage velvet jacket that I re-lined with beautiful blue damask satin several years ago, which I liked but wasn’t that excited about any more. Immediately I knew the main colour of the back embellishment needed to be blue, and I knew there were some large pieces of blue felt in my stash that used to be yarn bins. I’d sewn most of the DDS jacket pieces onto red felt, so I would do the same with the blue.

What imagery to use? I wrote a list of objects that interested me, and an astronomy theme emerged – a phases of the moon, telescopes, planets, etc. A strong image of a bird with wings spread also stuck in my mind, with batting behind to give it body. Framing everything would be a, well, frame. A quilted gold frame.

I let the ideas sit for a bit, to resolved into something I could see in my mind’s eye. In the meantime, I began gathering fabric, buying some shiny gold satin, then spotting some stretchy iridescent silver stretch dance fabric – which hopefully wouldn’t fray – for the moons. Looking through old fabrics to repurpose, I pulled out a black and silver bustier I’d made in my teens with a pattern that suggested feathers.

I sketched out the design, then got to work. Most of the piece came together over a week or so. The latin phrase was tricky – the internet is both helpful and unhelpful because it suggests a whole lot of phrases but then you find the forums where people discuss latin translations and it turns out everything is wrong and nobody can agree on the proper translation of anything.

However, the probably wrong internet translation of “to the moon and back” fits really neatly on the ribbon shape I’d cut, so I figured I’d just go with that and if any latin experts ever point out it’s wrong I’ll say it’s fake latin.

Once the panel was done I pinned it to the jacket, took photos and shared it with friends. And kept putting off sewing it onto the jacket. Initially because all the hand sewing parts had given me a very sore back. But also because hand sewing felt to velvet without catching the lining was probably not going to be much fun. And it wasn’t, when I finally got around to it. A couple of sewing YouTube videos got me through, and then it was done.

Unfortunately, it is waaaay too hot in Melbourne to be wearing this, even indoors. In the meantime, I have it hanging up where I can admire it.

I would like to add more to it. Something like telescopes and other tools of astronomy overlapping the gold frame. But I don’t intend to embroider them. If I find a nice print fabric featuring them, I might appliqué them on.