Hacked a Ruffle onto the Named Lourdes Jacket

Hi everyone! Helena from GrayAllDay.com here to take part in one of my very favorite sewing community events of the year – Indie pattern Month! It is such fun and I love how Kat and Mel put this on every year. I don’t know about you, but moving it to July was genius for me. June is packed, but in July we have the lazy days of summer upon us and I had time to sew this fun and versatile jacket for the Hack It! contest.

I love love love Named Patterns. They fit so well, they have wonderful instructions, and the styles are amazing. I actually won the Named Lourdes Jacket from a previous Monthly Stitch IPM contest, so this is such a perfect use! But just because I hacked this pattern does not mean that I do not adore the original design, oh no! I’ll be making a straight version of this jacket, I’m sure.

But for this fun version, I was inspired by the Nordstrom sale…I know you all see those posts and flit over to their website, click around and think “Hey, I could make that!” I saw this cute jacket, but if there is one thing I know, it is that I DO NOT NEED another navy jacket. But white would be terrific. I happen to have some beautiful white tweed with silver threads through it waiting for me.

What I did was utilized the cut made for front darts to insert my ruffle just on the side and back. Then I simply chopped off the sleeves to add a matching ruffle there. The modification became tricky when it got to the lining. I ended up leaving the lining free at the bottom and hemming my tweed normally. It would have been so cool to bag my lining, but I couldn’t do it this time. I also left off the buttons, as my inspiration jacket didn’t have any.

This pattern is beautiful and goes together very well. It does have a ton of steps and it took quite a while to even get to the sewing! There is a lot of interfacing (especially important with my ravelly tweed!) and they want you to finish many of your seams before you start. It is like they knew I was making it out of this difficult fabric, because those important steps were so necessary for my project and turned it into a really nicely finished product.

Some notes about the pattern – it is short! Very cropped. I even added length and you can see how cropped it still is with me wearing high waist jeans. The shoulders are also a little narrow. There is a very cool sleeve detail I had to leave off because of my ruffle but can’t wait to try on my next version. I do highly recommend this pattern and I love the finished product. I hope you do, too!