OOOOH! SHINY!

In another life, I must have been a MAGPIE...

I am so attracted to sparkly, mirrored, shiny things...

When I was in San Francisco last May, Shams took me to Fabrix, one of her local fabric stores...
(does she know how lucky she is to have MULTIPLE local fabric stores?). It's a catch as catch can store, so you never know if there will be wonderful things, or nothing. I lucked out, and found several "pieces des resistances"...one of them was a black faux patent leather croc piece, sort of like this:

It has been marinating in my stash, waiting for the perfect pattern/idea combination. Voila! (I'm clearly not over my motorcycle jacket craze...)

This is a pattern I've had for a while...I tried to make a jacket out of one of my beloved red pontes, only to have a massive FAIL, back in April. The problem was not the pattern, it was a  "wrong fabric/operator error" type of problem. SO... I pulled the pattern out of the corner where I'd thrown it and started again. I made a combination of Views A and B, using a LOT of black and white striped zippers.

Due to the difficulty of sewing on shiny plastic, I consulted my go-to sewing pro, Shams, (AGAIN), and invested  in a couple of Teflon feet for my Bernina; they are fabulous, and open up a whole new vista of leather and faux leather projects. They failed to make the construction EASY, however...to my needle and thread I had to add pliers (hard to get the needle through that black PVC) and, finally,
Gorilla Glue. I wrestled mightily with this project; I also chose to learn how to "bag a lining" and the combination of new techniques and difficult fabric caused me to take two weeks to finish it. Finished, it is, however...and here it is on Ethyl (who I couldn't have made it without)...

I lined it with a black and white striped silk

and here it is on ME...

And, look what I discovered when I was almost finished:

I guess Giorgio's a magpie, too!