Vogue 7806 Jacket, View C

I've had this on on my to-do list for  quite a while and finally decided to bite the bullet. The fabric is a faux leather and shearling from Fabric Mart and the pattern is OOP Vogue 7806.

View C  of this pattern is designed for faux shearling, but I ended up making several changes from the pattern instructions to give the jacket a more finished look. The pattern calls for a lot of raw edges, which look just that--raw and unfinished. I made shearling binding from extra fabric, which I sewed to the edges, wrapped around to the back side, then stitched in the ditch to fasten the binding on the reverse. Once sewn in place, I trimmed off the excess fabric on the back. Where going around curves, I had to slash the binding since it didn't have any "give" and later hand stitched the raw edges together. This is the finish that you can see around the pockets and around the perimeter of the jacket.

There is also a machine sewn buttonhole on the jacket, thanks to my Bernina 710. It was able to go through 2 layers of the faux shearling with no worries. Here's a detail of the buttonhole, which also provides a nice look at the texture of the faux leather side.

The faux shearling wasn't too difficult to work with although it was heavy and shed fuzzies all over the place. I was also wary about pressing so I catch stitched all the seams in place by hand. Since I'm not much of a hand stitching expert, I relied on my mid-seventies edition of the Vogue Sewing Book for advice:

Those old sewing books do come in handy and this one is a keeper!