Self Assembly Required

DIY dressmaking + crafts with Emily

My glorious Rosa bomber jacket!

My first jacket and most ambitious project to date!

This is (finally) my Rosa jacket from Wear Lemonade which I’ve been going on about for what feels like forever but is in reality just a few weeks… It’s a fully lined bomber jacket with in seam pockets and metal popper buttons. I added my own thing to it with some embroidery on the back!


The pattern is actually quite easy to make once you figure out the instructions. I hadn’t realised it only came in the original French! Luckily they have YouTube instruction videos on each of their patterns so anything I didn’t understand, I could work out visually from that but mostly Google Translate did the hard work for me! There were still a couple bits where neither the video or Google could help me so I just winged it. I figured there’s only so many ways you could really make this so its more than likely right!

By the way, if anyone out there is struggling on the instructions let me know and I can totally help you out!

So I used a navy blue and silver duchesse satin for contrasting bodice and sleeves. I cut all my pieces first but before I could sew anything I had to get my embroidery done! 

I was set on doing something on the back of the jacket and by fluke I realised that I had the perfect piece just lying around unused in my fabric stash. 

This peacock fabric was one I’d picked up in Thailand a couple of years ago which I never used. It was one of those pieces you buy on a whim because it’s so cheap and then realise you either hate it or have absolutely no use for it once you get back home… 

I blocked a section onto some bondaweb and carefully cut out the peacock shape (and flowers) ready to be appliquéd onto the back of the jacket.

Of course just sticking it down with bondaweb wouldn’t be enough to hold it in place forever so I opted to use some of my recent (?) freehand machine embroidery skills to stitch over the top of it to create texture, add colour and strength. (Check out my Instagram feed at the bottom of the page to see the WIP…)


This was not a challenge for the faint hearted. It took forever to finish!!

The final outcome though was totally worth it!

I used a polka dot cotton lining to finish it off. I’ve never lined anything like this before and it was an interesting experience to say the least – the sleeve cuff bit was very very weird. I still don’t quite get out it works… But it does! And that’s what’s important, right?


So whilst this is all still fresh in my head, jackets 2 and 3 and already on the go!

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11 Comments

  1. oh my god, sooooooo beautiful. I’ve never considered this kind of jacket, as I thought it would not fit my style, but if they can look this beautiful…

  2. Definitely glorious and is DA BOMB! Can only imagine how long the embroidery alone took. Very creative of you. I have a bomber pattern from Big 4 and maybe I’ll get to it one day! Your version is so inspiring 😀

  3. Super cool jacket! I love these jackets. Especially the piece on the back, lovely.
    I only follow your makings recently so this is why you get this late response😁

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