I’ve been avoiding making outerwear for a little while now. I’d been planning to try making a leather jacket but could never quite commit purchasing the hides. The last jacket I made was one of the things that got stolen from my car and I think I was a bit bitter about it after that! I thought it was high time I tried again!

I’d been admiring the workwear/ utility style jackets that have been everywhere lately. They seemed like a great alternative to the traditional denim jacket or biker/ bomber jacket styles that I normally go for. I’d been umm-ing and ah-ing over what pattern to go for – there are a lot! – but when Johanna of Atelier Scämmit got it touch and I saw the Tempo jacket, I knew this was the one to go for!

The Tempo jacket has the typical utility jacket boxy shape and is unlined. It features a front and back yoke, two piece sleeves, belt, epaulettes and a ton of pocket options (pleated, patch, pocket flaps, welted).

I wanted to use the remnant bits of denim I had left over from previous projects to make a patchwork version of it!

I decided to simplify the pattern and opted to not make the belt, loops and epaulettes. I shortened the jacket by 10cm – the pattern looked super long so I just went for the big chop! Annoyingly I forgot to shorten the sleeves too… I opted for pleated patch pockets with pocket flaps for my lower pockets and a plain patch pocket for the chest pocket.

The difficult decision was then how to work in the different colour denims!

I had three different colours to work with (check out their original uses here, here and here) and deciding where to put each one was tricky. To be honest I think any combo would’ve been fine but I can just get really caught up in the details! I ended up going for a left/ right contrasting denims and a separate colour for the collar, button placket and yokes. I chopped up the back bodice piece into 4 to add in more colour blocking here too. (If you do this yourself, don’t forget to add on your seam allowances!).

Sewing up was reasonably straightforward but that may because I’m quite experienced at this point – the English instructions in the booklet isn’t the best. There is an accompanying video showing how to sew it up. It’s in French but the visual demonstration was quite useful especially at the sleeve cuff placket stage which I found to be the trickiest part.

I chose to line the back yoke to make things neat and I used the same fabric as the yoke lining to make a bias binding with I used to finish the rest of the seams. (Yes that’s a Hong Kong finish, Esme… A year later and I’m still annoyed at that! 😂)

On the back yoke I added in a little embroidery before sewing it up. I thought it would be a nice way to add a little something to it! I embroidered the word “bonjour” to the right yoke. I felt it was appropriate for a French pattern!

I think it worked pretty well! The sleeves ended up a bit long but I’ll likely wear them rolled up anyway. I don’t even mind the double denim look going on either! 😂