Completed: The Vogue Coat

Ahhh, it’s finished! A little past all my self-imposed deadlines, but whatever – I have a new coat! Finally!

Of course, now I wish I’d given it a catchier name than “the Vogue coat,” but ehhh, too late now. Let’s just look at how nice my coat looks, yeah? 🙂

I guess there’s not much else to say about the making of this coat- I’ve outlined it pretty heavily here and here. Once I finished with all the pad stitching and steaming and general tailoring funsies, the rest of the coat came together quite quickly – especially since I’d already sewn up my lining and had it waiting for me.

Actually, let’s talk about inserting the lining real quick because I thought it was interesting how the pattern had me do it – I sewed the entire coat to completion – finished the backs of the bound button holes, sewed on the buttons, hemmed the bottom and the sleeves, stitched down the facings with long running stitches – and then inserted the lining by hand with slip stitches. At first, I tried to think up ways to not have to do this so I could just bag the lining like in RTW (one thing I learned how to do at Muna’s, man, we sewed sooo many coats there haha), but I eventually decided to just go with the instructions because I liked the way the finished coat felt with everything securely sewn down (bagging a lining, at least the way I learned, means that the facing and hem are left open and then you have to go back in and thread tack everything, which I sort of hated). Plus, the lining will be easy to remove and re-attach should I ever need to replace it. Considering that I plan on keeping this coat for a long time – or, at least, as long as I continue to fit into it 🙂 – I’ll probably end up shredding the lining long before the coat needs to be repaired.

Oh, you wanted to see the lining? Sure thing!

It’s red! Shiny shiny red!!

I can’t even tell you how happy I am that I decided to go with the silk charmeuse instead of the Bemberg Rayon or China Silk that I was originally considering. This stuff is LUSH. It’s so heavy and wonderful, which makes it easy to sew and press, and it’s so shiny and gorgeous! I can’t get enough of it! Totally takes that coat game up a notch, don’t you think?

I am just really happy with this coat. It’s surprisingly warm, considering how light the wool is and the fact that I only underlined it with silk organza – when I took these pictures, it was like 25* outside, and I felt fine. It’s also pretty lightweight, making it easy to carry around (after I took these pictures, I spent the day at the mall with my BFF and the coat fit easily in my purse strap while I walked around. So nice!).

Not to mention, it’s just awesome. I’ve always wanted a plaid coat. And now I have one!

And unlike mall coats, my plaid actually matches 😉

I love the topstitching on this coat. I used proper topstitching thread so you can really see it, and my machine had no trouble plowing through all the layers of coating and hair canvas.

Here’s a dorky fact about me – I love setting in coat sleeves! Really! Instead of using gathering stitches and all that nonsense, I use this cool little trick that uses a bias strip of fabric (for this coat, it was pajama flannel, ha!) to ease the sleeve head before you attach it to the armhole. Lolita patterns has a great tutorial on exactly how to do this, and even some tips of on what kind of fabric to use. I’ve used this technique for all my coats and I pretty much always get perfect results.

Here’s the coat without my distracting cowl. I ended up going with these black glass buttons as I like how they are simple enough to not distract from all the plaid going on with the coat fabric.

One thing that really upped my game with the coat this year was that I had a new iron to steam the shit out of things with! I ended up getting a gravity feed iron for Christmas (yay! Thank you, mom!!) and I can’t even tell you how delighted I am with the pressing output from that thing. It gets SO HOT, doesn’t auto shut-off (!!!) and I also got a shoe with it so there’s no shine or melting. It’s SO awesome. My coat really benefited, too, as you can tell – see how sharp the creases are at the hems and lapels? Love. Love love love!

Y’all probably already guessed this, but I also made my little knitted cowl to go with my new coat. It seemed appropriate, especially since I had a ball of Cascade 128 in the perfect shade of red just waiting to be used. I used the Blue Streak pattern, which was easy enough to memorize so I just carried the project around in my purse and knitted a row or two during downtime. Which was all the time – Christmas morning, knitting a cowl. Sitting in the movie theater waiting for the previews to end before The Wolf of Wall Street started, knitting a cowl. Waiting in line at emissions testing, knitting a cowl. Whatever, I love how portable knitting is! Ha!

No need to knit new gloves, as it goes perfectly with my childish skeleton gloves 😉

In other cool coat-making news, I finally found a home for my Fabiani coat – my mom! It fits her perfectly, so she’s been wearing it for the past month. Yay!

Anyway, I guess that’s it! Yay for coat-making, and yay for this giant project to finally be over! 🙂

Tags: coat, completed, hot damn this is my jam, Mood Fabrics, Mood Sewing Network, plaid, tailoring, vogue, vogue coat