altering a sport coat to a kilt jacket

[cavscout]

Just a few of the issues I was concerned about are the collar and the button holes (number of and placement) and the pocket configuration (patch, slit w/o flap covers, slit w/ flap covers).

If the jacket has a high collar or neck line you will have a lot of extra work to re-crease the collar for one with a low neck line. Trying to mod a double breasted into a Crail just won't "look" right. The collar is different, the center line and angles are all designed to look good for a double breasted. Unless the alteration shop tears the whole coat apart it will always "look" odd.

A 5 button coat will make it difficult to put the sporran cut away in the proper place to look nice. You may end up with a button hole running right through your hem and then have to pay to have the button hole sewn shut which may or may not look right. Or you may end up with the two button holes you wanted but one is way up under your chin

A coat with no pocket flaps means you will have to use some of the fabric cut off the coat to make pocket flaps to cover the old pocket slits that will be too low in the end.

It's really more a concern of what it will take to over come the issues. ANY coat could be made into a kilt jacket. It will just be more cost effective to get a coat as close to the final appearance as you can rather than spend a lot of extra time and money totally rebuilding a coat very different than what you want it to end up looking like.

[Phogfan86]

I knew double-breasted would be a mess, and I've not even looked at slash pockets, flapped or unflapped.

I just didn't know if a basic wool blazer with patch pockets would be as workable as, say, a tweed. Being a fat guy, I've learned that, apparently, other fat guys don't give their tweed jackets to thrift stores. So, I've turned to spending time on eBay most every night, trying to find the right one. The last thing I want to do is think the wrong one is the right one. My sister's going to do this for me, so I want it to be as easy as possible for her.

[cavscout]

I can't think of a reason off the top of my head that a non-tweed coat wouldn't work. 21st Century kilts makes pinstripe kilt suits that look awesome. It may be less forgiving than tweed if the stitching is not the same or perfect but functionally and aesthetically there shouldn't be a reason it won't work.

[Panache]

cavscout has nicely summed up a good number of qualities that would make a conversion difficult or unworkable.

It is the cut of a jacket that makes it a good candidate for a conversion or not.

Preferably you don't want to have to mess around with the lapels or collar. Best to look for one whose collar/lapels will work "as is"

If you can find a jacket that has pockets placed high enough to not look strange when you shorten the jacket you save yourself a lot of effort (plus you don't need to sew up the pockets, they can remain functional)

Cheers

Jamie

[fluter]

Here is a summary of my jacket analysis:

Visualize where the new hem should be. a standard suit jacket or sport coat's hem will be near the middle knuckle of your fingers---you can probably cup your fingers and feel the hem. The kilt jacket will be near (say, just above) the hem of the sleeves.

Visualize how the sporran cut-away will join the hem. Picture a smooth circular arc from near the bottom button to the hem. It's a portion of a circle whose radius is about a foot. In fact, I drew my first one with a bit of chalk and a string (the poor man's compass).

How, how do the buttonholes and pockets fit in with this scheme? that determines the kilt-worthiness of a potential conversion.

The buttonholes should not interrupt (much) the smooth curve from front to hem, and you should be able to work around them to re-hem the new curve . Note that you may be cutting out one or more buttonholes.

Pockets can be removed entirely, moved (if they're patch pockets), shortened, or become fake pockets with the flap concealing the old slit.

Disclaimer: I've only completed one conversion. I have two more in planning stages. This was my first project with a sewing machine (or the first in about 40 years).

The jacket was perfect in that it (a) was inexpensive to begin with (b) had not been worn for 20 years (c) is a very simple, unstructured blazer so it was easy to deconstruct. You can see that my cut-away curve is not so smooth at the top, through working around a buttonhole which was removed. It's not so smooth at the bottom, mostly through inexperience. But it works, and for me the color is much better as a kilt jacket than its previous incarnation, and even draws an occasional compliment. You can also see why I cut my jacket sleeves a little long.

I took a patch pocket, moved it just a bit higher, and made it about half the original depth.