Materials
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- Ollie Bomber Jacket PDF Pattern from Sew a Little Seam
- RCF French Terry Construction Trucks (see pattern for amount)
- Teal Lycra Jersey Knit (for sleeves)
- Mustard Lycra Jersey Knit (for collar, cuffs, and waistband)
- Separating zipper
Hey Friends!
I’m sharing these jackets on the Raspberry Creek Fabrics blog today. I LOVE this pattern from Sew A Little Seam, because it is super versatile. The Ollie Bomber pattern comes with options to add sleeves, lining, and a hood. Today I’m going to share a couple of tips on how to sew this jacket in the easiest way possible.
Tips for simplifying the Ollie Bomber Jacket
- Go with unlined. This is pretty obvious, but making this without the lining reduces the number of pattern pieces you’ll need to cut and sew, and also saves you time sitting at the sewing machine.
- Make sure you use the right kind of fabric! This pattern is catered to stretch knits. French Terry is great for this because it’s a little bit thicker, and quite stable for a knit. You just want to be careful though, because it’s harder to remove accidents in French Terry because the fabric structure makes it difficult to see your thread seams.
- While it looks less professional, I opted not to bind my collar seam or my zippers. For the zipper, I just sewed it in as usual, and instead of sewing on a binding, I just topstitched over the inserted zipper. I serged to collar to finish it. A zigzag or overcasting stitch would also work.
- The trickiest part, outside of the zipper, is knowing how much to stretch the collar, cuffs, and waistband as you sew. The easiest way to do this is to mark every quarter. For example, on the Ollie collar, mark each quarter with a pin. Then mark each quarter of the neckline with a pin. Line up the pins on the collar and the neckline, and then stretch the collar accordingly as you sew. I always always always baste stitch (sew using your longest straight stitch) to make it easy to fix before I go in with something more permanent–like serging.
If you have any tips for making the Ollie Bomber Jacket, or outerwear in general, please leave them in the comments!
