My daughter was home from college for Winter break and you know that means she had another cosplay challenge for me! This one was for the character “Pidge” from Voltron. As soon as I saw the fitted, military-style jacket, I thought, too bad it will be stiff and uncomfortable! Then I hit up Cali for some solid wovens and was thrilled to find STRETCH broadcloth!

I never even dreamt I would find a suitable stretch fabric in the right colors. I grabbed the last yard of Kelly Green (whew!), some gray, and a few yards of the white. What luck to have exactly the three colors I needed! It also comes in six other solid colors for a total of nine.

This 97% cotton, 3% lycra fabric could not have been more perfect for this project. It has a better hand and more opacity than your standard broadcloth and the stretch makes it so much more comfortable and gives a little more wrinkle-resistance too.

The jacket pattern from Billy the Brick Cosplay on etsy was originally for a fully lined jacket. To keep the sleeves most comfortable, I opted not to line them, but I did retain the self-lined front and back for opacity and also to conceal the closures. With the self-lining, even the white was virtually opaque. You can barely see where the black binding crosses under the top front panel.

The broadcloth was very easy to sew with a regular size 80 needle. Cut edges stayed crisp and didn’t fray, even when I had to sew and unsew a particular seam more than once!

The jacket lasted the day with a minimum of wrinkles and maximum of comfort.

I recommend this stretch broadcloth for your suitable woven garment sewing projects, cosplay and otherwise, and I highly recommend checking out Cali Fabrics before you shop anywhere else – you never know what you will find.

Love to cosplay? Check out our previous cosplay post!