Jacket conversion with EZ epaulettes and pocket

[Chas]

Fine piece of workmanship there MNlad - you should be proud.

Regards

Chas

[David Thorpe]

Nicely done! Very sharp! You have avoided the common pitfalls which present a dead giveaway of an obvious conversion.

[Thomas H]

Very nice job - I am going to try that too thank you for sharing it

[Llama]

Very nice! I think I will try this with some of the material from my tuxedo trousers. Since I had the jacket altered to wear with my kilt, I don't have much use for them anymore.

[sydnie7]

Nice jacket! That looks great!


Might I ask what those common pitfalls are?

Lastly:
How did you do the hem on the bottom of the jacket? It looks very nice.

Thanks for putting up with all of my questions!
-yodofizzy

I do like those epaulettes and the "fool your eye" ticket-pocket flap. To address the "pitfalls" question, I will say that the cut-away is rather sharp -- one of those conversion tell-tales caused by the [perceived] need to not run the edge of the new hem through an existing buttonhole. We've had some discussion here about just making the line go where you want it, especially with a very tweedy fabric. Remove the buttonhole stitching and mend the hole as best you can -- they'll never see it from a galloping horse, and the resulting gentle curve makes the jacket look much more as if it were designed for kilted wear.

The lowered pockets are another give-away of a conversion, which OP recognized and came up with a novel answer.

I'd say those two -- front curve and pocket placement -- are the biggies. Anybody else?

[Wil]

Very nice, I need to do this to a Montrose Jacket of mine..... You have inspired me, thanks.

[David Thorpe]

Might I ask what those common pitfalls are?

Many jacket conversions have the pocket patches too low (close to the hem). This is necessary to cover the slashes of the original pockets.
The other commonly seen issue is a front hem which does not curve smoothly from the bottom button/hole to the horizontal hem of the sides and back of the jacket. A smooth curve is often very difficult or even impossible to achieve, especially when an existing lower buttonhole is eliminated in the conversion. The desired curve often need to transit the old buttonhole, making a clean and properly-curved hem impossible.

[MNlad]

The hem at the bottom of the jacket was a replication of the original hem on the jacket, a line of stitching about 1/8 inch in from the edge of the fabric that ran from under the collar, down the front and around the circumference of the jacket. I put it in after hemstitching the outer fabric and reattaching the lining. I thought it was a nice detail.

I may still go back in and try to round off the top inch of the curve from the bottom of the jacket to under the second button. It's still a bit too abrupt a break--looks good from some angles and less so from others. One of the advantages of starting with a 3-button jacket is you have a bit more room to work with than you do with the typical 2-buttom sport coat.

[MNlad]

Much better. I re-curved the top inch of the altered front to better sweep into the existing edge of the jacket. The color match on the photo also better matches the actual jacket color. Now I just have to brush out the flattened fabric from the pressing. Thanks, folks.