My husband bought a $30 suit jacket from Target that was too big for him, mainly in the waist. We decided it would be a good project for me to work on since I’ve never done any tailoring or altering of men’s clothing except for the hem of pants. So I attempted at creating a great altered men’s suit jacket.
1. First thing I did was have him put it on and I pinched the fabric to fit and then pinned it. Then I unpinned it because I got his undershirt :/ and re-pinned it.
2. Then I marked the place where the pins went into and out of the fabric just in case a pin fell out with a chalk pencil. I did this on the lining of the jacket as well.
3. I measured in between the dots and marked the measurements on the jacket, with a fabric chalk pencil, and on a piece of paper. These measurements are what I needed to take the jacket in by. I did this on the lining of the jacket as well.
4. I then got out my handy seam ripper and separated the lining from the back of the jacket. I just did the bottom of the jacket and up the closest seam line on the side of the jacket.
5. With the lining up and out of the way, I ironed the seam so it was no longer open. Then from the seam I measured and marked half the distance that I wrote down and because the measurements were slightly different in some locations I did this at each site of where a pin was and connected the dots. This starts with no measurements at the top because the shoulders fit so the line in a diagonal down the back of the jacket increasing as it goes to the bottom because the waist of the jacket is what was too big. I pinned the layers together and sewed down the chalk line, cut off the extra fabric and ironed the seam open. The first time I did this, I had a notch of extra fabric at the collar and had to redo it.
6. Repeat step 5 for the lining.
The last couple of steps is figuring out the tail and reattaching the lining to the jacket.
7. For the matching the lining to the tail I just kept folding and pinning until I had what I thought looked acceptable.
8. To reattach the lining to the jacket, I am sure there is a machine stitch way, like a blind hem stitch possibly, but I decided to hand stitch it with a slip stitch, I own a book called Teach Yourself Visually Sewing and does a great job illustrating how to do it. The stitch mimicked the rest of the lining to the jacket pretty well which is another reason why I picked it. I then ironed the lining and now the jacket is a great fit!