Finished: Vintage-Style Faux Leopard Jacket

I was going for a "Mad Men" look here with my faux fur jacket. Here I am channeling Joan Holloway. Or maybe the former Mrs. Roger Sterling.

As promised, dear readers, here's a photo of me in my jacket. All I did to get a version I liked was to fold the lapels back and move the buttons to the lower front of the jacket. I modeled it for the girls at Carolyn's sewing blogger klatch on Sunday and they agreed it looks much better this way.

I'm officially sick of writing about this jacket, and you probably are of reading about it, but here are the sewing details:

• Faux leopard fur from Fabric.com's RL collection (sold out). Many, many thanks to Carolyn for telling me to buy it. (You little enabler you.) It has such a low pile that I was able to treat it like a velvet and not worry so much about fur everywhere. Black flannel-back satin lining from Haberman's, to add a little warmth to it.
  

• Butterick 5259. The shoulders run narrow; adjust as necessary if you make this pattern.

• This fur has vertical "stripes" of dark and light fur. I printed out the pattern line drawing and then used colored pencils to determine where I wanted the light and dark parts to fall.

• I actually bagged this lining, which is unusual for me because I like attaching linings by hand. I followed Butterick's adequate directions and ended up machine-stitching virtually all of this jacket.

Bottom line: I'm happy with the results. It's a fun jacket to wear and it was easy to make. Having lots of outerwear choices helps make the cold weather a little more bearable, right?

Detail shot of the lower front. The three buttons cost as much as the fabric did.

Yippee! I had enough left over to make a muffler. I'll definitely try sewing with faux fur again if I ever come across nice stuff like this in the future.