Making Rose Tyler’s Stolen Earth Jacket- Figuring out the Fabric

A while ago I made a post here on my blog asking if anyone was interested in a tutorial on how to make Rose Tyler’s jackets from the Empty Child/Doctor Dances and Turn Left/The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. I was surprised that there was a lot of interest in it (I really shouldn’t have been surprised, but still…), so I decided to delete the post so no one will think I’m still asking for input about a tutorial and begin to work on creating the jacket “tutorials”.

I decided to work on the Stolen Earth jacket and make the tutorial for it first because I already have everything I needed to work on it. The Empty Child/Doctor Dances jacket I made was in preparation for a convention so I didn’t take ANY progress photos, thus letting me work faster. So, in order for me to make a good tutorial, I’ll need to get more fabric and possibly make the coat again. So, the Empty Child jacket must wait for another day. Specifically a day when I’ve saved enough money to buy everything I need to make the jacket over again. 🙂

I decided to split the “How I made this jacket” into separate posts so I can update everyone on my progress and keep everything organized. 🙂

Please note: I never saw the original jacket used in the episode in person. I’m basing my version off photos, screen captures, and information found online. Links to the websites I used will be referenced in the second post about this jacket.

As a reminder, the original jacket is an Oasis dark purple leather jacket. This is what it looks like…

You can read more about the jacket and the whole entire Rose Tyler outfit at the Doctor Who Cosplay and Costuming Rose Tyler break-down page on Livejournal.

As for what the jacket is made out of, it’s obvious the original jacket is made out of purple leather. (See link above) After looking at the screen captures and promotional images, the jacket looks like it is also made out of purple ribbed knit and purple lining fabric. There are also four zippers in the jacket, one separating one (Maybe 24 inches long?) and three smaller ones for the pockets (Maybe 5 inches long?). The teeth of the zippers are silver colored.

These supplies should be easy to obtain, but I’d recommend that if you’re making your own jacket to see the fabric and zippers in person before buying them. That way you can color match the leather, ribbed knit, and purple lining and double check to see if it matches the colors of the actual jacket.

Although the fabric and supplies should be easy to get, I had some problems getting mine. I live in a rural area and the nearest fabric store is about 45 minute drive. So, it took several months of on and off searching to find the fabric and zippers I needed for the jacket.

As of this post, I was able to get all the fabric I needed for the jacket…

Starting from the top and going clockwise: Outer fabric (Faux suede that is machine washable), lining fabric, ribbed knit.

Yes, I know the fabric is not very dark in the photo. You can thank my camera’s flash for that. 😛

Anyway, I got 4 yards of the faux suede and lining fabric and 2 yards of the ribbed knit. I washed all three fabrics before cutting anything, which was a good idea because the ribbed knit shrunk some.

Now that I have the fabric I need to make the jacket, I also needed the zippers for the jacket. Like I mentioned before there are four, one long zipper and three for pockets. So far I was able to get the main zipper and two of the three pocket zippers…

The black zipper is the long zipper, it separates, and is 24 inches long. The other two zippers are 5 inches long and doesn’t separate.

The reason why I have two of the three pocket zippers at this time is because the store I went to only had two zippers. I guess they had a huge rush on jacket pocket zippers? XD

As for the “fabric” color of the zippers (The part you sew onto the jacket), I didn’t really care about making all the colors match the rest of the jacket. Although I do care about all the pocket zippers colors matching with each other, I don’t mind if the long zipper is a different color. If you are making your own jacket and want the fabric color of the zipper to match the rest of your jacket, I’d recommend buying zippers with silver teeth and dying them to match your fabric’s color.

Well, that’s all I have to say about the fabric. Next time I’ll talk about the jacket pattern. 🙂