Eyelet Ecstasy

The leather eyelet jacket begun earlier on this blog (see my post of February 4, 2009) was completed and delivered to a *very* happy client this past weekend!

As a plus size, she'd never believed she could wear a leather jacket. To her delight, I created a jacket style for her that was both slimming to the eye, and lightweight to wear.

The reverse side of this purple embossed ostrich was an amazing coral-red shade; thanks to the hand punching, the coral tone peeps through each eyelet and adds depth to the design. Oversized antique brass hooks form the closure for the jacket, unusual in that the hooks are "on display" on the front side rather than hidden underneath.

When my clients are happy, I'm happy! :D

Leather Confetti

I began work on a custom leather jacket. First step seems to be, making a mess.

This is my new leather hole punch, along with some of the zillions of "holes" from making leather eyelets in the new jacket. Each panel of the jacket will be entirely punched by hand, creating a feminine, lacy effect in the leather.

The silk charmeuse lining will be a gorgeous lavender shade, just one tone lighter than the plum leather -- you can see here how the leather was originally embossed to look like ostrich. I'm scattering my eyelets in triangular-shaped groups of three, a nice odd number. (Ever notice how jackets always have either three, five, or seven buttons? There is a DaVinci code for fashion too!)

There's lots of work yet to be done -- the amount of punching is actually bruising my hand, ow ow! -- but I am *so* pleased with the effect.