Luke Skywalker: The Struggle

Hello friends, I come to you with some tales of my woes. Surrounding the love of my life, Luke Skywalker’s Return of the Jedi costume. So no rambling today, lets just get into it.

So the pattern I used was a McCalls Mens pattern. Which is truly where the problem all begins. I cut out the smallest size option possible and decided, yeah, this will be fine. I held the pattern pieces up to my body and eyeballed it. Without pausing to take and exact measurements of things like the shoulder seams. I really have to stop eyeballing things. I know better. Anyway the fabric I used was a lightweight black cotton suiting.

I used jacket view B with some minor alterations, being that I didn’t add the extensions at the bottom. Luke’s jacket stops at his waist so I didn’t need them. I cheated when it came to the collar because it had to be cut on the fold since I needed two of them by folding the fabric an additional time which meant I only had to pin once, but I had to cut through four layers of fabric to do it. I hate pining that much.

Now in the movie Luke’s jacket is lined in silver. But I didn’t want to buy a whole lot of silver fabric since only a little bit ever shows. So I cut all the lining out of the same black cotton suiting and purchased a little roll of silver remnant fabric for the front part that folds over. Which is currently attached to the front lining piece and looks great, by the way. Also by this point I gave up on pining and started using random objects as pattern weights.

I then assembled the outer shell of the costume, and everything was going really well. I made the sleeves and attached them, and then started sewing the lining together. And then I realized that I had a major fit issue. You see when I was trying on the jacket without the sleeves I noticed that I had a bit of extra room in the shoulders, but I figured that the seam allowance for the sleeves would solve that. I was very wrong. So when I tried the jacket on with the sleeves attached I discovered that my shoulders are not broad enough to fill out the jacket. The shoulders dropped over the edge of my shoulders and the seam was hanging down at like…tee-shirt sleeve hem level. Not a very attractive look. So I had to rip off the sleeves. And now I am stuck trying to figure out what to do. Because unfortunately this isn’t as simple as just taking the garment in a few inches to fit. If I took it in like I would any other garment, it would be fixed in the sleeves but become to small in the side seams. So I have to do a lot more fussing with it, I will probably have to adjust the front and the side front pieces and then also adjust the size of the sleeves to fit the new armhole size. Which I am not looking forward to at all. I’m just really happy I realized the fit issue BEFORE I finished constructing the lining and sewing it into the jacket. Because otherwise I would have had to re-cut the entire jacket out from scratch and started all over. Which probably would have driven me right up the wall.

I don’t have any photos of it because I was really embarrassed by not realizing my mistake sooner. But I do have video of myself laying on the floor on top of all the jacket pieces lamenting over this disaster. It’ll all be going into a youtube video later. Maybe.

So since I am feeling rather defeated at the moment by this jacket, I shifted gears a little bit to focus on my Jyn Erso costume. My dad got the digital version of Rogue One so we watched that on Friday and it reignited my love for her. A lot of the costume is going to be altering pre-existing materials, so I went on a shopping trip to Goodwill today and got a great amount of things.

One of those turtlenecks will be altered into her shirt and the other into her jacket that she wears. I have a top that I am going to pull apart to make into the pattern for her vest, and I already know how I am going to alter the bags and the pants. The only items I still need to purchase for Jyn are the boots, gloves, and little bits of trim I need to alter finish detailing the jacket. So hopefully I will have her done very, very soon.

Once the weather gets nicer and there is more greenery about I will be getting photos of Odette so please stay tuned to see those. If you want more frequent updates on my projects, please follow me on Instagram at HexxSews where a lot of times I post directly to my Instagram Story about what I am doing at the moment.

Well that is it guys, I hope to be back soon with either a triumph over Luke or more progress on Jyn. Until next time, Cheers.