[amended 7-13-05, 8:30PM]
I’m out of kits.
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I have about 10 sign-ups on the jacket bagging tutorial although I haven’t written anybody back yet (sorry). This tutorial will be posted here so everyone can follow along but you can participate if you like as well. Donations are gratefully accepted and as a bonus, donors get one free! I’m packaging up the jacket kits now. This is what each kit contains:

One set of sleeves, joined
One back, joined
Two fronts, joined
One completely joined lining including sleeves
Two sleeveheads
One strip of wigan (goat hair, not horsehair)
Two covered shoulder pads (I couldn’t find any of the uncovered ones)

This is everything you need to complete your own jacket except for thread. Because I want to get rid of these, I’m selling kits for the cost of putting the kits together and postage and handling. I think you’d agree I can’t be making money on the $15 I’m charging for them. Anyway, what doesn’t move relatively soon I’ll be passing off to someone else, maybe the magnet school. I won’t be keeping these around, I don’t want to move them so get one now. If interested, see the tutorials index in the left sidebar for payment information. This is what it looks like completed if you don’t remember from before.

Caveats: These come in red and two different shades of brown. I cannot guarantee that your colors will match but I’ll do my darndest to do what I can. You may elect to buy some leather sewing needles but if it were me, I’d use ballpoints because there’s more wool than leather in this thing. It really doesn’t matter because this is a sewing exercise, not something you’re going to wear (these fit like crap, see the leather dies posting). If you’re worried that your machine won’t go through leather, don’t be. A home machine can handle this with no problem although it helps if you have a Pfaff. I’ve heard Berninas have walking foots now but I don’t know anything about those. You can sew garment weight leathers on a home machine with no problem. In fact, I made a video back in the late nineties sewing a leather vest entirely on a home machine, so I have proof. Below is a picture of the vest front.

And beneath this is the back:

And I guess I really don’t have proof anymore; I lent the video -a master- to Sandra Betzina on Memorial Day of 1997 when she came to stay with me and my then-spouse at our Los Lunas house and she never returned it. She says she can’t find it. And I’m still out the $4,500 it cost me to shoot it and have the thing edited. I can only be glad I didn’t lend her the pattern.