Edwardian Braided Jacket

I love braided jackets! A couple of years ago I made an Edwardian braided cycling jacket with DIY black fabric soutache. And now I’ve made another Edwardian braided jacket – this time with gold soutache!

Related: Edwardian Braided Cycling Jacket

Instead of new fabric, I cut up a modern wool coat and used this to make my Edwardian braided jacket. 😀 And for the faux fur collar & cuffs, I used leftover pieces of a vintage faux fur bolero from my grandma.

Edwardian Military Braided Jacket

In the Edwardian era, women’s fashion inspired by men’s fashion was very popular, such as Norfolk coats or men’s college sweaters.

Related: The Edwardian Sweater Girl + 25 Free Edwardian Sweater Patterns

And similarly, anything military was fashionable in the 1900s: The typical Edwardian S-bend corset was even called the “military straight-front corset” in the Edwardian era!

Related: Edwardian S-Bend Summer Corset

Antique Edwardian Braided Jacket Inspirations

My Edwardian jacket is mainly inspired by this beautiful Edwardian painting of a black wool jacket with white fur collar and cuffs, this 1900s black wool serge jacket with standing collar and two-piece sleeves and this antique black braided wool jacket. And it’s also inspired by Clara’s toy soldier uniform from The Nutcracker And The Four Realms movie.

Here’s a free antique Edwardian jacket sewing pattern based on a 1895-1905 blue wool jacket with black soutache.

Self-Drafted Edwardian Jacket Pattern

At first, I didn’t know what pattern to use for my Edwardian jacket. But then I noticed that my self-drafted modern blazer jacket pattern with princess seams is very similar to antique late Victorian & Edwardian jacket patterns like the jacket patterns in this 1892 pattern book or this 1897 pattern book. So I used my self-drafted modern jacket as a basis and adapted the pattern to make it even more Edwardian: I made it smaller at the waist and wider at the hips. I also reshaped the front of the jacket.

My Edwardian jacket pattern has darts at the front and princess seams at the back. It has slanting shoulder seams and two-piece sleeves. In total, my self-drafted Edwardian jacket pattern consists of 15 pieces – not counting the cuffs and the fabric piecing. 😉

Edwardian Standing Collar

Most Edwardian coats and jackets had a standing collar. Unlike the standing collar of Edwardian bodices and blouse, the standing collar of Edwardian outerwear was usually a flaring standing collar like this antique Edwardian quilted wool collar.

I used this antique Edwardian collar pattern as a basis which. Then I adapted the antique pattern to fit the neckline of my self-drafted jacket pattern. This was so difficult and annoying and required several mock-ups to get it look right!

Modern Wool Coat + Grandma’s Faux Fur Bolero = Edwardian Jacket

Like I mentioned before, I re-used a modern wool coat instead of buying new fabric for my Edwardian jacket. The materials for my Edwardian wool jacket are the second-hand wool coat, a leftover piece of a vintage faux fur bolero from my grandma, viscose taffeta from my stash for the lining and polyester batting, also from my stash.

A couple of years ago I had bought the coat second-hand on ebay. The modern wool coat was short and tubular and didn’t look very flattering on me. But it was made of a beautiful black soft pure wool broadcloth fabric. And even though the coat didn’t fit me very well, it would’ve been a shame not to re-use the beautiful wool fabric! So I pre-washed the wool coat to prevent further shrinking, removed the lining and placed my sewing pattern on the coat.

Turning The Coat Into An Edwardian Jacket

You would expect that a coat – even a short coat like this – has enough fabric to turn it into a jacket. But this isn’t always the case! 😉 This wool coat had a lot of unnecessary seams: the seams were unnecessary because they were only there to mimic the look of a tailored coat but they didn’t shape the coat at all. But the seams were not only unnecessary, the fabric was also cut at the seams! This left me with many small pieces of fabric. So to turn the coat into an Edwardian jacket, it required some puzzling with the pattern pieces and also a lot of fabric piecing because there was almost not enough fabric in the coat for my Edwardian jacket.

I tried to hide most of the fabric piecing with the gold soutache at the front of the jacket. And the faux fur trim at the cuffs also hides fabric piecing. But there are also a lot of seams that I couldn’t hide. And I can’t even remember of how much pieces of fabric the Edwardian jacket is made! 😆

Flap Pockets

My Edwardian braided jacket has tailored flap pockets similar to this or this Edwardian jacket with flap pockets. The flap pockets were the original pockets of the modern coat. I placed my jacket pattern so on the coat that I could use the flap pockets. I wanted to keep the coat pockets for my jacket. But there was also no alternative than to keep the pockets, otherwise I wouldn’t have had enough fabric for my jacket.

Faux Fur Collar & Cuffs – Refashioned From Vintage Faux Fur Clothing

Edwardian jackets were often embellished with fur like this antique 1900s blue jacket with fur collar. So I also wanted to add a fur collar and cuffs. However, I didn’t want to use real fur. Instead I used leftover fabric scraps from a vintage faux fur bolero from my grandma.

I removed the lining, pre-washed the faux fur bolero and then cut it up. The faux fur fabric of the bolero is off-white and has a texture like mink fur. Mink was a popular and expensive fur in the Edwardian era. The pile of the vintage faux fur fabric is less soft but much denser and shinier than today’s faux fur fabrics.

There were only a few small pieces left of the vintage faux fur bolero which were – with some fabric piecing – just enough for the faux fur collar and cuffs of my Edwardian soutache jacket. By the way, even the faux fur cuffs are pieced together!

For the standing collar of my Edwardian jacket, I used four layers of batting, one layer of the black wool on the outside and one layer of the faux fur on the inside. I quilted the four layers of batting together with Edwardian tailor stitching (parallel stitching rows). The stitching, quilting and soutache on the outside help to stiffen the Edwardian standing collar so it keeps its shape.

Lining

Because my unlined Edwardian cycling jacket is too cold to wear in the winter, I decided to line this Edwardian jacket. After the debacle of the natural-fibre batting of my “never-ending” Edwardian blue wool coat, I just used polyester batting for the Edwardian jacket.

Related: Edwardian Blue Wool Coat With Faux Fur

I quilted the batting together with natural-fiber viscose taffeta lining fabric also left over from my Edwardian coat. The lining is white with thin black stripes.

A Sewing Fail!

A lot of time passed between adjusting the pattern and finishing the the jacket. After adjusting the pattern, sewing the lining and partially sewing the wool layer I didn’t have time to sew. Then some sewing supplies, like the buttons and soutache, were out of stock. So a few more weeks passed until the supplies were back in stock and finally arrived. And then on top of that I badly hurt my hand and couldn’t do any sewing for a very long time!

When I could finally work on my Edwardian wool jacket again, I had forgotten that the darts at the front of the wool layer were still missing. And I only noticed that the darts were missing, after I had measured, pinned and sewed the soutache to the jacket and also after I hand-sewed parts of the gold metal buttons to the jacket! 😭 So I had to remove the soutache and metal buttons again before I could finally put in the darts and then put the soutache back on!

Soutache Braid Trimming

The soutache braid trimming of my Edwardian jacket is inspired by antique Edwardian military braided jackets. My main inspiration was this beautiful antique Edwardian photograph of the actress Jean Aylwin in a military braid uniform. Here‘s an Edwardian colorized version of the photograph.

I used wide metallic gold soutache and attached it in an artillery pattern like on this antique 1892 ‘The Artillery’ jacket. Here‘s a similar men’s military braid jacket and an antique 1899 red wool jacket with black braid at the MET museum.

Gold Metal Buttons

Inspired by Jean Aylwin’s beautiful Edwardian military braided jacket and this men’s military uniform, I wanted to use military-style half round gold metal buttons.

And you wouldn’t expect it but the gold metal buttons were the most expensive part of my Edwardian jacket! 😆 I never thought that the buttons for the jacket would cost a small fortune! 😲 Everything has become so expensive in the last few years.

My Edwardian braided jacket closes at the center front with buttons and soutache button loops. And at the back of the jacket I used four similar but flat gold metal buttons from my stash. In total, there are 42 gold metal buttons on my Edwardian braided jacket. This makes the jacket very heavy!

Edwardian Underwear & Accessories

With my Edwardian braided jacket, I wear my short Edwardian tailored black wool walking skirt, my refashioned Edwardian black faux fur hat, black cotton stockings and Edwardian-style black leather boots.