Mother's New Jacket: The Fabric

I took my mother fabric-shopping online over the weekend to pick the fabric for her new jacket.

My original thought was to use a fabric like this:


Which would end up looking somewhat like this:



I had forgotten, however, how much my mother likes the color blue. So as we perused fabrics, and settled on picking something from reproductionfabrics.com, I kept showing her lovely reddish-pink prints, and while she liked them, she wasn't enthused.


Until we found a blue-on-white print. Then she lit up.

I wasn't completely convinced on this one--while I've found very similiar prints in my extant fabric hunts, I haven't found anything precisely like this one. Mainly, it had butterflies. Ok, I know--it's being extremely anal. And mother eventually convinced me, for a couple reasons. One--she is not nearly as anal as I am, and this is her outfit, after all. Two--form over precision. Just because I haven't found a print with butterflies does not mean that we can't use one, given that the form follows what is known from the period--viny florals. A print with dump trucks or Transformers would be different, but this is totally plausible.

So, the fabric we chose:


Will end up with a look somewhat like this:


Terrible picture, but you can click through to see a way-cool close-up on KCI's website. This is, of course, a gown, not a jacket, but you can get the idea of a jacket and matching petticat from this piece. I plan to spiffy up the petticoat with a gathered ruffle similar to those seen here, and plan to use navy tape on the edges and the stomacher to break up the print a little.