Prada Lace Jacket: Finished!

Here I am posing in my Prada tribute lace jacket on Sunday morning, with the neighborhood primary school as the location for this shoot. DD is taking photography as an elective this year and is much more willing to be my photographer, just as long as no one sees us. Apparently taking photos of your mother is an uncool thing.

Like so many of us, I drooled over Prada's Fall '08 collection with all its gorgeous lace dresses, skirts, jackets and blouses. I particularly liked this boxy jacket and thought I could easily interpret it using my TNT jacket pattern, Textile Studios' Mandarin Collar Jacket. I was lucky enough to find this heavy lace at Metro Textile; Kashi comes through once again!

I was a little nervous about sewing lace like this, but Liana suggested basting first. (Note: You have to hand-baste textured lace like this. Even machine basting at 5mm was painstaking to pull out.) I shaped this pattern to where it really became my own design by narrowing the shoulders, lengthening the sleeves, taking in the sides so the jacket fits snugly, and subsequently omitting the mandarin collar. I made most of my adjustments to the pattern before I cut my fabric. (I threw that last sentence in so I could boast about my burgeoning pattern-fitting skills.)

This jacket was so easy to make. I serged the seams to a piece of black seam binding for stability; for the neckline I finished it with seam binding, which I then turned under and stitched. The front plackets and hems were made by serging black china silk (the width to be turned) to the edges, then turning and stitching in place. With lace like this the stitches just disappear into the fabric.

And that was pretty much it to making this jacket, which is really more of a lacy cardigan. Most of the construction was done on my serger. The key is using a pattern that has no princess seams, darts or center back seams, plus finding a heavy lace with texture and the right amount of peekaboo so the top you wear underneath shows through.

Here's the back view of the jacket. I would have liked a little more peekaboo in this lace but it's really fine as is.

I originally thought I might make the mandarin collar as the pattern specifies, but then I decided to stay true to the Prada jacket style. But of course I had already cut everything out. So this means the neck edge of the placket does not meet the neck edge of the jacket, as you can tell in the photo above. But I hope most people won't notice this mistake.

I used 5 yards of silky seam binding I bought at Pacific Trimmings in NYC to stabilize the seams as I serged them together.

To give some density to the front plackets and the jacket and sleeve hems, I attached china silk to the edges, making the width of the silk the same amount that I wanted to turn up. If I were to make this jacket again, I would have attached the silk panels to the right side, stitching 1/4" from the edges then turning, so the raw edge would be enclosed in a nice binding. But because of the dimensional texture of this lace the serged stitches blend right in so I'm not kicking myself too much.