Burda Style For people who sew

The shoulder pads are made of a piece of felt topped by expertly feathered cotton batting that is pad stitched down. Cotton is something I have never seen in a shoulder pad, but it makes a dense and malleable structure that conforms smoothly to whatever shape you choose. Yeah, i just fell in love with a pair of shoulder pads. The pad is set so that of the 7.75 inches it takes up along the armscythe seam, only 2.75 inches are to the front, and it curves nicely back toward the neck to reach .5 inches from the neck hole. The thickest portion of the pad is .5 inches at the tip of the shoulder, where it reaches only as far beyond the shoulder as the seam allowance (3/8 inch). This is so that you don't look like a linebacker, because ladies just don't do that.The impressive shoulder pads almost seem to overpower the wimpy sleeve heads. Of course, the sleeve heads are simply there to create a smooth fall of the sleeve over the armscythe seam as this is a woman's jacket, and we already discussed the linebacker thing. So, here the sleeve head is a thin polyester batting that is doubled over unevenly so the outer half hangs 1.5 inches below the seam and the inner layer hangs .75 inches below. You can also see the stay the keeps the lining attached at the top of the shoulder.