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Completed: The Quart Coat, in Alexander McQueen Fabric

Well y’all. This post has been a LONG time coming – hopefully it was worth the wait!

I made a coat! Big whoop, amirite? It’s been a minute since I sewed a real coat – I just don’t live in a climate that warrants a serious need for multiple coats. Which is a bummer because I really LOVE sewing me some coats! And I actually sewed two this year – but I just want to talk about this one first. Like I said, it has been a long time in the making!

I received this fabric way back in May of 2016, actually! It took me a solid year to decide what I wanted to make with it, then nearly another year to actually start the project. And while I finished this earlier in 2018 (in February, it appears) – it has taken me this long to get some photographs of it! So yeah, this might be my longest project to date!

So – a little bit about the fabric! This fabric is actually Alexander McQueen coating from a prior collection. It is 100% wool, solid black, and has laser printed skulls all over that you really only see in certain lighting. I wasn’t able to find what this fabric was used for in AM’s collections, but it’s essentially a medium weight (on the lighter side of medium weight, to be specific) coating. It’s super, super amazing.

The coating was actually given to me – you know, back in 2016 – courtesy of my friend Anokhee. She originally bought it from Darrell Thomas Textiles in Ottawa, Canada (where she also teaches!). If you are thinking “wow Lauren that’s a really fucking generous gift” YOU WOULD BE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. I was floored when I received the fabric, and am honestly still a bit dazzled every time I wear my coat. I didn’t really know Anokhee that well when she sent me the fabric – we were email/internet buddies, seeing as she lives in Canada and I’m in Nashville – but this year, I actually got to hang out with her several times when I was in Canada to teach my Jeans Workshops at Darrell Thomas Textiles! I’ve even sat in her hot tub, so, basically, yes she’s an amazing friend.

And speaking of Darrell Thomas Textiles – if you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen this name pop up a few times. Darrell’s shop gets some of the BEST high-end designer fabric I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been really lucky to be the recipient of a few special pieces, as well as be able to shop there in person! In addition to this McQueen fabric, I’ve gotten some amazing Dolce & Gabbana prints (stay tuned for a blog post on one of them!), as well as pieces from Burberry, Louis Vuitton, and other gorgeous pieces that aren’t necessarily attributed to a specific designer but are still stunning as hell. While these pieces definitely, absolutely are not cheap – they are unique, special, and high-quality. I realize this post just sounds like a giant advertisement, so I’m gonna stop now, but – just wow. Check out his Instagram if you want some eye-candy to creep on.

Ok, back to my coat!

So, yes, I hemmed and hawed when it came to cutting this fabric! First, I couldn’t decide on a pattern. Then, I went through a lot of second-guessing with the fit, post-muslin. Once I powered through and cut all the (many, many) pieces, the actual construction of this garment went pretty quickly (according to my Instagram – it took about two weeks!). I don’t generally second-guess myself and I rarely treat my fabric like it is some kind of precious gold, but in this case, I am glad I took my time to figure out exactly what I wanted because the finished coat is basically perfect as far as I’m concerned!

The pattern I chose is the Quart Coat from Pauline Alice Patterns. I love the military look of this style, and I felt it would pair well with my McQueen fabric. Especially since my fabric can look either solid black or covered in skulls, depending on the light!

I cut a 36, and my preliminary muslin looked preeetty good except that there were some light pulls near the bust, which is usually indicative of needing a full bust adjustment. For the life of me, I could NOT find a way to add room at the bust with these particular pattern pieces! The princess seams come out of the arm hole, not over the bust, and every tutorial I found (or reference in my dozens of fit books) only covered the latter. And half of them wanted to add a dart – which I didn’t want in my coat. I tried several different things and agonized for months. I knew this fabric was expensive, hard to come by, and I wanted to do it right! But you know what? I ultimately decided, fuck it, and went ahead and cut the coat. Part of this was because the drag lines were indeed really subtle – super minor. The other part was me realizing that muslin doesn’t have the same “give” that regular garment fabrics do, and there was a good chance those minor fitting issues would be resolved by simply using a different fabric. I’m not always right, but I was right in this case. The wrinkles disappeared, the coat looks fabulous, and life goes on.

After getting past that and cutting aaaaalll those pieces, I was ready to sew! I actually started a little log to keep track of how long my progress was taking. JUST THE PREP ALONE (cutting, marking, underlining, etc) took 8.5 hours! I stopped keeping track after that (ha!) but I always tell this to people when they suggest I do some custom sewing for them. Bitch, u can’t afford me.

Since the coating is on the lighter weight side, I opted to underline all my pieces with a cotton flannel. This adds a layer of support (necessary as this is a quite structured coat) as well as additional warmth. I used a Robert Kaufman Mammoth Flannel for this purpose; I had purchased it with the intention of another project that I ended up scrapping. If you’re curious, this is the specific flannel I used inside my coat haha. While I find Mammoth Flannel to be really reasonably priced (and it is SO NICE!), it is a bit expensive to use as underlining. That said, I already had the fabric so I didn’t see any point in buying something else, even if it did cost less.

Underlining definitely took the longest. I like to underline by hand, which means a looong time of sitting at my cutting table, with endless hand-basting. I use cotton thread (silk is nice too, but cotton is what I had on hand!) and create long basting stitches, which are then removed as the pieces are sewn together. After the pieces are sewn by machine, I trimmed all the flannel from the seam allowances and then catchstitched the seam allowances down (again, by hand) to keep them nice and flat. It’s a lot of extra effort, but this fabric deserves that effort!

The lining is a solid black silk charmeuse, which I bought at Mood Fabrics on one of my many trips to NYC. I love, love LOVE using silk charmeuse for coat linings – it’s heavy and warm, and it looks expensive as hell. Just the way silk charmeuse catches the light when you wave it around delights me to no end. Why I chose black – well, I had considered using a fun lining color, like red or teal. But while shopping, nothing at the store really appealed to me. I also feel like most RTW (not all, but a lot of them) use coordinating and matching linings, rather than contrast. I wanted my coat to look like it could have come from the shop, and also, black on black just looks good.

Since my coat was all black, that gave me a little freedom to choose something more contrasting for the buttons and sleeve zippers – so I went with BRIGHT SHINY GOLD!!! I just love how this turned out, I think it really adds a luxurious touch that isn’t over-the-top. My buttons are from Mood Fabrics (they are actually Marc Jacobs hahahaah!), and my zippers are from Sil Thread (in the NYC Garment District). I spent a long time trying to find hardware that had the same tone and brightness, so they match well.

A few things about the construction – one, I definitely put the pleats in backwards. Whoops! It doesn’t bother me, but, if you noticed that – yes, I am aware. I did not do any traditional/heavy tailoring with this garment. Part of this is because I just wanted to finish the damn thing – and part of it is because I’ve learned I don’t really like wearing heavily tailored coats. I dunno, they just feel a little too precious to me, and I’m scared I’ll mess them up somehow! Also, my padstitching always ends up going wonky if the coat gets stored with the lapels in the wrong place, and I can’t ever seem to steam them back into submission. So while this coat has some basic tailoring – the fronts are interfaced (with a fusible weft, before I added the underlining), there is a back stay, and I added both shoulder pads and sleeve heads – I left off the fancy stuff like horsehair, padstitching, and bound button holes (just machine ones here!). Sacrilegious? Sure. Whatever you say.

I don’t know what else to say about this project, so just have a photo dump:

Oh! Here’s another piece from Darrell Thomas Textiles – one of my precious Burberry wools! I actually have two of these (the other one is the classic tan, which I believe they just got a new shipment in at the shop), both of which I made into simple blanket scarves. I started with a yard of fabric, which I cut in half lengthwise and then seamed together (with a flat-felled seam) to create a rectangle that is 28″ wide by 70″ long. I then hemmed the two long sides with a 1/2″ seam folded twice and edgestitched down. On the tan scarf, I also hemmed the short ends – and on this one, I teased out a little fringe! I have always wanted one of these Burberry scarves – and while the fabric was not cheap (I don’t remember the exact amount, I think it’s somewhere in the realm of $150-$170 CAD per yard), it is definitely cheaper than buying from Burberry! And it’s basically a giant blanket, which is the best thing ever 🙂

So, there’s the long story saga of my Alexander McQueen coat! Cheers to you if you’re still here reading 🙂 Big thanks to Anokhee for her incredibly generous gifts – both the fabric and for introducing me to the wonder that is Darrell Thomas Textiles! Another giant thanks to my student Elisa, who graciously took these photos for me during my workshop at Stitch Sew Shop earlier this month! In closing, I will leave you with this beautiful cheese plate that we destroyed immediately after:

Have a great day, everyone!

Tags: alexander mcqueen, amazing fabric, coat, completed, darrell thomas textiles, pauline alice, quart coat, silk charmeuse, wool

Comments 32 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Giving New Life (+ Lining) to An Old Coat

14 Mar

Hi everyone!

Wow. It’s been a minute, huh? Many, many thanks/hugs/appreciation for everyone who reached out regarding my dad. Every single comment, email, text message, card – I read every single one of them. While I can’t possibly reply to every single one of them, I do want to thank all of you, as I found them all so comforting. I feel like I am saying this way too much lately, but y’all truly all are the best.

As it is, it’s time to jump back into real life. Actually, I did that pretty much the day after the funeral – I went to Leesburg, VA to teach a workshop at Finch Knitting and Sewing Studio, which was really wonderful and a very welcome distraction from what I had been dealing with the week prior. The next weekend, I flew to Brooklyn, NY to teach my Jeans Making Intensive and Pants Making Intensive classes at Workroom Social. I just got home about a week ago, and have spent this time trying to catch up all the things I’d set aside while I was gone- boring adult-y things, like work and cleaning my much-neglected apartment. I’ve finally gotten a chance to get back into my normal life indulgences – like sewing! – and man, it feels good to be back!

Before I get into the post, I did want to announce my next upcoming workshop in May! I will be traveling to Hyattsville, MD to teach another workshop at Three Little Birds Sewing Company May 13th and 14th (and also a meet and greet / project gossip the evening of May 12th, because wine). This is like all the other workshops I do (other than the pants-specific ones in Brooklyn, which are also Workroom Social specific ;)) – you get to choose whatever project you want to work on that weekend! Whether you want to make a lined dress, a fabulous pair of jeans, a new winter coat, your first bra, whatever – I’ll be there to support ya! And if you don’t have a particular project that is screaming for support, can I just say that this is also a great excuse to make your sewing a little more social for the weekend 😉 I always have such a great time running these workshops, and I’m so excited to do it again!! You can read more about the workshop here, and also sign up! It’s going to be an awesome weekend 😀

Ok, now for the post!

This is a bit different that what I usually post about – it involves repairing an existing garment, rather than making a new one from the start. I think most of us have announced at some point or another that we’d rather make a new piece than alter or repair one that needed it. I know I’m guilty of it! But lately, I’ve been making a bigger effort to reduce waste whenever I can, and repairing garments that need it is a great place to do this!

I bought this coat at Banana Republic when I was 19. I remember being super proud of the purchase – it was one of the first “nice” things I ever bought with my own money (well, and the help of some gift cards). It’s not the nicest thing I own – and I can certainly produce better garments out of my own sewing room today – but it’s followed me around for the past 12 years regardless. I love the color and I love the way it fits me. It has certainly seen it’s share of wear over the last decade, though – the lining was shredding in several places (I can specifically vouch that the lining at the hip was probably torn by my studded belt – YES, THAT’S HOW LONG I’VE HAD THIS DAMN COAT), and I recently ripped a huge hole in the sleeve lining while trying to put it on. I realized that I would either need to replace the lining entirely, or just get rid of the coat. Y’all all know that I am pretty much always up for a challenge, so I decided to give it a shot! Worst thing that could happen was that I’d ruin a coat – which, admittedly, was already kind of halfway ruined anyway.

Here you can see some of the places the lining was tearing. The lining was also discolored, especially under the arms, and wearing very thin in several places.

I actually planned this project last year, in December. I waited until I could go to Mood Fabrics in NYC and pick my replacement lining fabric in person – the green wool is a really unique shade, and I wanted to try to match or coordinate with it as much as possible. Spoiler, I never did find a perfect match to the green (not surprised), but I found a print that I adore, so there’s that!

This is the silk that I went home with me – it was with the rest of the silk prints on the 2nd floor. I am not sure what type of silk it is specifically – it has a heavy, fluid hand just like silk charmeuse, but it is slightly textured, almost like a twill. I suspect it may also be a blend, because it didn’t take to pressing as well as I would have liked. I bought 2 yards (after consulting with the guy who cut my fabric and going by his suggestion), which ended up being plenty. I actually have leftovers – matching silk top, anyone? 🙂

After I bought the lining fabric, this project had to sit on hold for about 3 weeks while I went to Egypt. I haaate leaving stuff half-finished if I’m going to be gone for longer than a weekend, and this project I especially didn’t want to have a lapse in, since I was kind of winging it. So I didn’t actually start until the end of January, but fortunately it did not take very long!

I should confess: I had every intention of turning this post into a tutorial on how to re-line a coat. I started with a bunch of photos, but as soon as I got to the sewing part – guys, it’s pretty much impossible to photograph these steps. Plus, every coat is a little bit different in how it’s constructed. So this post is more of a loose guide if you’re considering doing this yourself, and I have linked to the resources that I found useful when I was in the throes of my repair. Also, I should point out that I have made several lined coats at this point, so the process isn’t really that different from sewing a coat and then adding the lining. If you have sewn a lined coat, you can totally handle this. If you have yet to hit this milestone in your sewing practice, maybe wait before you tackle this project 🙂

The first step is removing the lining from the coat entirely. This part wasn’t difficult, but it was annoyingly tedious. I knew I didn’t want to deal with the drama of drafting a lining, so I needed to keep the lining pieces as intact as possible in order to use them as my pattern pieces. I removed the lining from all the way around the facing of the coat, being sure to take notes and photos of anything that I might need to know when I was putting it back in – such as the seam allowances used, how the back pleat was sewn in, stuff like that. This was the #1 reason why I waited to start this project – I knew I’d forget everything while I was in Egypt!

Pulling out lining can be kind of interesting though – you get to look into the guts of the coat and see how it was put together! I’m always fascinated to see how RTW does things, as opposed to what the home sewer does. For example, they sewed small rectangles of the lining into the seam allowances where one traditionally puts thread chains (such as under the arms). Then, the rectangles were sewn directly to the seam allowances of the outer, eliminately the time it takes to make a thread chain and attach it. I thought that was pretty cool!

Another thing I found interesting was the tailoring done on the coat. It’s actually pretty nicely tailored (with fusible interfacing), considering its just a coat from Banana Republic.

After I had the lining out of the coat, I carefully separated all the pieces and marked which one was which. I flattened them with an iron and marked grainlines. I will be honest here – I used a similarly-styled jacket pattern I had in my stash to figure out where the grainlines were. They might be slightly off, but eh, it’s a lining. I could NOT for the life of me see where the grain was on the actually pattern pieces, and the fabric was so delicate that is just kind of disintegrated when I tried to rip it.

One thing I will point out when you are marking your pattern pieces – it is really important to mark the sleeve front and back, and also where the sleeve cap hits the shoulder seam. You can snip directly into the seam allowances before taking the pieces apart – presto, notches 😉

From there, you just lay your pattern pieces on the fabric and cut them out. Remember, they already have seam allowances – no need to add those.

I should also point out that I did not pre-wash my silk before cutting it. Since the jacket outer is wool/polyester, it is dry clean only. Which means this silk will never hit a washing machine, so I didn’t bother to wash it! I DID wash the leftover piece after I finished the coat, and it changed the texture of the silk a bit. More on that if I ever get around to sewing that piece up haha.

Next, you assemble the lining to make a lining-coat. Easy stuff!

Ummmm so here’s where I stopped taking pictures haha. I had to figure out how to get the lining into the coat shell, and not a single one of those steps was remotely photogenic 😉

You have two options when putting the lining in- One, you can do it the old school couture way, and hand sew it around the entire perimeter of the facing. This is definitely the easier of the two options, but it’s more time-consuming. The second option is bagging the lining into the coat – sewing everything together at the hems and pulling the coat through a hole in the lining. This step is much more fiddly – you have to set everything up properly so you don’t twist the sleeves or whatever, and it totally looks like a hot mess until the very end. Also, I realized this a bit late in the game – but it’s reaaaally finicky to sew the lining to the facing at the neck (where the collar is). The layers are super bulky and you don’t have much of a seam allowance to work with. I made it work, obviously, but I did end up un-picking out my stitches a few times.

If you need help bagging a lining, this tutorial on bagging a lining from Grainline Studio is great. For the back vent, I watched this YouTube video from FashionSewingBlogTV on sewing a lining to a vent.

So, I bagged my lining, pulled everything from a hole in the sleeve, and then went back on the inside and attached the lining to the shell with thread chains (I wasn’t even gonna try those weird lining rectangle things haha). Then I pressed everything really well, and attached new buttons. Oh, and I sewed the labels back on too – the original BR one, and one from Mood Fabrics (the sizing and fiber info tag is underneath the Mood tag, fyi). It’s kind of a collab coat now, you know?

Sooooo, drumroll pls…

Yay!!! I just love it so much 🙂

Due to the new layer of silk, the jacket is actually much warmer now (the old lining was polyester). Always a plus!

The colorful new lining makes me so happy!

I also replaced the buttons, with something similar but a little more refined. These buttons are from Pacific Trimming, which I also picked up while I was lining shopping. I reallllly wanted to do self-covered buttons, but I could not find anything that remotely matched this green. So I went with tortoiseshell, although these are shank buttons (the original buttons are flat).

I really enjoyed the challenge of working on this project – in fact, taking things apart and putting them back together was how I originally taught myself how to sew, so it was a cool throwback to revisit those roots. I like doing things that force me to slow down (and/or walk away) and think, and this was definitely one of those. And hell yeah, this coat is finally back in rotation! Feels good!

Note: The silk fabric used in this post were purchased with my monthly Mood Fabrics allowance, in exchange for my participation in the Mood Sewing Network.

Tags: coat, completed, jacket, lining, Mood Fabrics, Mood Sewing Network, reconstructed, repair, replacing a lining, silk

Comments 56 Comments
Categories Mood Sewing Network

Completed: Crazy Aztec Waver Jacket

28 Oct

Well, my winter jacket is ready for this year! Guess I can cross that one off the list!

Before we get too deep into this post, I have to warn you – I took a LOT of photos of this jacket. It’s a big project and one that I’m especially proud of. I am not even sorry that you’ll have to look at like 40 pictures of it now. Yep.

As I mentioned in my Fall/Winter sewing plans, I’ve been collecting all the bits and pieces to make this jacket for a couple of months now (PROTIP: Making a coat can get expensive when you start buying all the crap that goes into it, but you can make the cost hurt a lot less by buying everything in phases 🙂 HAHA). I’m pretty set on the heavy winter coat front – my Vogue coat is still serving me well nearly 2 years later, and the Ralph Rucci knock-off is a wonderful piece to wear when I’m dressed up. My wardrobe does have a small gap in lightweight jackets – my black and gold bomber jacket, while awesome, is a bit short to really be cozy, and my orange Minoru jacket is really better suited for the super mild spring temperatures as it’s really not that warm (it’s just cotton with a poly lining, after all)! What I needed was a longer jacket, preferably one with a hood. I always miss having a hood.

The Papercut Patterns Waver Jacket was my pattern choice – it’s a really cool, casual style and I liked that it included a hood, as well as the waist-cinching drawstring. This pattern is pretty similar to the Sewaholic Minoru, although without all the additional gathering nor the hood-stashing wide collar. I think the style of the Minoru looks pretty good on me, so I knew the Waver would as well. I also found an eerily similar replica (with set-in sleeves rather than raglan) at the GAP a few months ago, so I was able to try it on and see what I thought before I started making muslins. I love it when things work out that way!

I cut the size XS, which is my usual size with Papercut. I like that the jacket has some shape, but there’s still enough room in there for me to pile a sweater on underneath (which is about the max layer of clothing I’d have on if the weather was appropriate for a jacket like this!). My muslin revealed that I didn’t need to make any fitting changes, other than shorten the sleeves about 1cm (ooh, look at me, sounding all international and shit).

Of course, the fabric really makes the jacket! This cool navy Aztec virgin wool is from Mood Fabrics, and I’ve had a big piece squirreled away in my stash for months. It’s a pretty lightweight wool, which is perfect for my needs, and suitable for this pattern. I love all the colors in the print! Trying to cut those pattern pieces to match all the bold, colorful lines was a little bit of a struggle, but I made it work. I lined the jacket with English blue silk charmeuse (the exact one that I used appears to be sold out at this point, sorry!). I really did agonize for a long time over what color lining to include – the fun side of me loves contrast linings, but the boring side of me thinks it makes things look a little cheap (except that red lining in my plaid Vogue coat; I have no regrets about that one!). I actually like a more subdued lining, and prefer the contrast in the form of texture, not color. So I went with English blue, which perfectly matches the navy in the wool.

I didn’t do a lot of crazy tailoring with this coat – it was actually a fairly simple project. I did add a back stay (made of medium-weight muslin and using this tutorial from Sewaholic) to the back to keep it from stretching out, and I catch-stitched all the wool seam allowances down so that they’d stay flat with wear (similar to this, but without any of that horsehair interfacing. This is a casual coat that doesn’t need heavy tailoring!). There’s no padstitching in this project, or bound button holes. While I LOVE big projects with lots of interior details, not every project has to be couture-worthy. Especially if it’s a simple jacket.

ha! Bet you didn’t notice those big patch pockets, did you? I cut those so they are hidden in plain sight right on the front of the coat. Good thing I have radar fingers, otherwise I’d never be able to find them when my hands get cold.

I also added inseam pockets (not included in the pattern, but as easy as stealing a pocket piece from another pattern and popping it into the side seams as you are sewing it up!), sewn in silk charmeuse, along the side seams. The wind blowing in my hair for this photo is an added bonus, and you are welcome for that.

The hood was a big selling point for this pattern! I love jackets with hoods, but I never really come across jacket patterns with hoods that I actually like. It’s nice to have a hood for rain and light snow, so I’m glad this pattern has a hood! It’s a nice 3 piece hood, too, so it stays on your head without squishing it, and stays put (and it’s big enough to cover my head even when my hair is pulled up in a bun!). The pattern calls for lining the hood with self lining (aka the jacket fabric), but I was afraid that wool would give me weird hat head, so I lined the hood with more silk charmeuse instead. I figured, they make pillowcases out of silk, so hood lining can’t be too far off… right?

As you can see, I also added faux fur around the hood. Yeehaw! I love this detail in coats, and I was keen to add it to this coat as well. This black and white faux fur from Mood is really nice stuff – it’s super soft and almost feels like real fur. It’s certainly way better quality than any other faux fur I’ve sewn. This doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to sew – I still had fur flying everywhere as I cut it, etc etc – but the payoff is worth it!

What you can’t see in these photos is that the fur is actually removable – just in case I change my mind and want it off, it won’t be difficult to remove it (I doubt that will happen, but I like having options!). I sewed the fur trim the same way you’d make a fur collar, loosely following this tutorial from Casey, although I did not add any interfacing as my fur has a pretty heavy backing as-is.

I sewed black twill tape around the edges and then folded it to the inside, catch-stitching everything down securely.

Then I laid my silk charmeuse lining on top, covering all the insides and attaching the folded edge of the lining to the twill tape on the fur, using teeny hand stitches. The fur trim was then attached to the perimeter of the hood, using invisible hand stitches. I briefly considered using snaps or buttons+loops, but decided that I didn’t want anything to show when the fur was removed. The stitches will be easy to pull out if I need to take the fur off, but you can’t see them when the fur is on, either. You can see what the jacket looks like without the fur here, if you’re interested!

Here’s that blue lining! You can see another change I made to the jacket – instead of using a drawstring to cinch the waist, I added wide elastic. This was mostly due to comfort – elastic isn’t constricting like a rigid draw string is – plus I think it looks better on me. I did have to change up the order of construction a bit to get this to work. First I bagged the lining as usual (per the pattern instructions). I left off the drawstring channel pattern piece and instead sewed through all the layers of the wool and lining to make a channel (similar to the construction of the Minoru), then fed the elastic through that and tacked down the ends.

I also added a little leather tab to the back of the neck, so I can hang the coat more easily (or from my finger haha).

I actually like this way this coat looks unbuttoned, which is a first for me!

I do wish that I had paid more attention to my pattern-matching on the front of the coat, so that the design would continue uninterrupted. Oh well! It still turned out pretty cool despite that mishap, and there are triangles down the center front instead. I’m ok with that!

Now for a buttload of dressform and flat pictures:

The buttons are antique glass buttons that I bought at the flea market earlier this summer. Love them so much! That guy has the best buttons.

My favorite part!! The leather tab was an idea I took from an old American Eagle coat – I just cut a strip of heavy leather, rounded the ends, and punched holes so I could run stitches through it. And the woven label is from Wunderlabel – isn’t that the best finishing touch? I had a hard time deciding what mine should say – I wanted it to say Made in Nashville, but I don’t really live in Nashville anymore (I mean, we are close enough but I’m a huge weirdo/stickler about that sort of thing!), so The South works 😉 Anyway, this was my first experience with Wunderlabel – I’ll have more of a review up in the future after I’ve used more of the labels. But in the meantime, I’m sewing them on everything!

While I certainly did not push myself to hurry and finish this project, I did wrap things up pretty quickly! I think it took about a week to get everything sewn up, after making the muslin and cutting the fabric. I’m glad I finished it, too, because I think it’ll come in handy when I’m in NYC in a couple of weeks. Hell, it’s already starting to get cold here – I will probably be able to wear it later this week! 🙂

Note: The fabric for this jacket was purchased with my allowance for the Mood Sewing Network (over a period of months, I might add! 🙂 ). Pattern was given to me as a gift. All comments on this blog post 100% mine, however!

Tags: coat, completed, jacket, papercut patterns, tailoring, waver jacket, wool

Comments 64 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Completed: Albion Jacket for Landon

5 Jan

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to 2015! I’d like to start ringing in the new year by showing you something that I made last year (lolz, sorry). It was for Landon, aka unselfish sewing, which makes for a delightful turn of events.

An Albion jacket! Yay!

Fair warning – we took a lot of photos (if you don’t recognize the background, that’s cos these were taken in the Smoky Mountains! FANCY!), and I had a really hard time narrowing them down. This dude is just so damn gorgeous looking. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to deal.

Anyway, I initially planned this coat with Landon earlier in 2014 – according to my Mood orders, it was sometime in January/February. We ordered swatches, settled on fabric and design changes, and I made a muslin. That’s when things just stopped and stayed that way. The muslin was all kinds of wrong and I didn’t feel like dealing with it. I was afraid I might have even cut the wrong size. So, I did what seemed like the most logical solution – I shoved everything in a box and didn’t think about it until a couple of weeks ago, when Landon started asking me again about when he might get his coat. Bless his heart.

Enough time had passed to heal my wounds, so I dug out the old muslin and we tried again. The only thing I remembered being wrong was that the sleeves were all kind of haywire – super twisted all down his arm, and the hem went up near his elbow when he raised his arms. I wasn’t sure if the issues were because of how the sleeves were drafted, or if I had just somehow managed to cut the muslin off-grain (totally possible), but I ripped one sleeve off and cut another – on-grain – to test. It must have been a grain issue, because that solved the problem. Other than tweaking a little bit of sizing at various points, and adding some length, the rest of the jacket seemed to fit pretty well. I made one more muslin with all the changes to verify that we were good to go.

As I mentioned, this is the Albion by Colette Patterns. We chose to make the shorter jacket version in a size XS (based on Landon’s measurements and his personal preferences for ease), and added 1/2″ to the side seams for a little more wearing ease (I probably could have cut up one size – but I’d already shredded the remaining tissue, and this was easier. Actually, he says the arm holes fit really well so it’s probably best we stayed with the small size). I also added 1/4″ to the CB fold, just to give him a little more room back there. The sleeves were mostly fine – except I added 1/4″ to the seams below the elbow, and removed 1/8″ above the elbow. I also added 3.5″ to the sleeve length (NO idea why it was so short!). I think those are all the fitting changes I made. Pretty minor stuff.

The actual construction took almost no time at all! I had it done within about a week, working off and on as I had time. Since it’s not a proper coat, it doesn’t require any sort of crazy tailoring – really just the same techniques you’d use to make, say, a lined dress. I did add a back stay – I just used leftover muslin – to keep the back from stretching out from all those hugz Landon gives me (aw). I also added interfacing to the places where it made sense to include it – the plackets, the sleeve tabs. It seemed weird that the pattern didn’t mention it, but maybe that’s because it’s written for a heavier coating.

For fabric, I used cotton twill for the outer, and plaid wool flannel for the body lining. The sleeves are lined with silk charmeuse (to aid with getting the jacket on, and also for warmth – cotton isn’t very warm, but wool and silk are!).

I also added an interior patch pocket for his phone, as well as a hanging loop at the back neck. The interior pocket is cut on the bias, but it’s lined with silk cut on the straight grain (to keep it from bagging out as it gets used). For the hanging loop, I just used the pattern piece from the Minoru Jacket. Not trying to reinvent the wheel here!

I knew I didn’t want to buy toggles (they’re expensive and they never look quite right), so I made them. I started with these horn toggles from Mood Fabrics, and used scrap leather (given to me by Elizabeth) and cotton cording to make them. I just goggled ‘how to make your own toggles’ (I know, I’m so creative) until I found a tutorial I liked – this was the one I used. I attached the cording to the leather patches at both ends, just for additional strength.

To attach the toggles, I marked their placement on the jacket and then stuck them down with double-sided tape. I traced around the entire toggle – patch and all – with chalk (this is helpful so it’s easy to brush off – I like my chaco liner, personally!) to be really sure of the placement, but the tape mostly helped with keeping things in place while I topstitched. I used my #10 edgestitching foot and just sewed really slow, stopping with the needle down when I needed to turn. Didn’t even need to change my needle – the leather was thin enough for the 80/12. Done and done!

I like the 3 piece hood! I like that it stays put, and it has a nice shape (you know how some hoods just kind of suck in around your head? I hate that.). I cut the center piece on the bias to ~add interest~.

I REALLY love the lining! I was initially sad to not keep it for myself (that is one helluva a wool flannel, is all I have to say about that), but it’s really perfect for this coat – and those are totally Landon’s colors. When cutting, I just made sure the side seams were matched and that was good enough (and easy!). I’m also really glad we lined the sleeves in silk, because I can’t imagine how awful it would be to try to pull this thing on without slippery sleeves, yeesh. Plus, silk charmeuse. mmm 🙂

Anyway, I’m happy to report that Landon loves his coat! He has been wearing it nonstop (seriously put it on as soon as I finished it – to wear around the house hahaha), and been showing it off to all his friends. I’m just happy to make him happy (not to mention be off the hook for another year :P). Oh, and in case you’re wondering – that’s a me-made shirt Landon is wearing, too. Gah, I am the best girlfriend.

**Disclaimer: All fabrics were provided to be as per my involvement with the Mood Sewing Network. The Albion pattern was given to me as a gift from my sponsor, Indie Stitches.

Tags: albion, coat, coatmaking, completed, cotton, flannel, jacket, Landon, Mood Fabrics, Mood Sewing Network, silk, toggle coat, toggles, wool

Comments 49 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Completed: Vogue 1419 (At Last!)

18 Nov

Well, no that the V1419 Ralph Rucci Sewalong has officially wrapped, I guess I can finally show y’all my coat! For those who didn’t catch my post on the Mood Sewing Network yesterday to see my completed coat a day early – your patience is finally being rewarded, including some never-before-seen shots that weren’t included in the original post! How exciting!

Anyway, coat!

Considering how much I went over the making of this coat at length (see all my posts tagged v1419 here), I won’t be going over the construction so much in this post. If you want more info, feel free to check the tag – or just holler out some questions in the comments (I don’t expect anyone who didn’t actually sew along with the sewalong to have actually read the posts – they were pretty intense, and I find sewalong posts kind of boring if I’m not part of the action, you know? Anyway, snaps to you if you did read the posts! I hope you learned some new coat-making tips and tricks 😉 ). Here’s a general rundown of the basic information, for those who are dropping in for the Big Reveal:
Pattern: Vogue 1419
Fabric: From the Mood Fabrics flagship NYC store – I enlisted the help of my favorite Mood dude, George, to assist me in finding my perfect red wool coating – and he knocked it out of the park! This coating is red virgin wool, it’s nice and thick with a great amount of body to give the coat it’s lovely shape. The wool itself is soft and easily malleable (very necessary for all the crazy intersecting seams of this pattern!), and the color is just PERFECT! The pattern itself does not call for lining, but I did add a layer of bright red silk taffeta as an underlining, to help the coat slide on and also as an additional layer of warmth. The contrast (inside binding, bound button holes, belt trim) is also silk taffeta, in a darker red that matches the wool coating. I think it gives a nice bit of textural interest and keeps the coat from being just straight up loud and red. Both silk taffetas were also purchased from the Mood Fabrics store in NYC, and the colors were chosen with the help of George.
Notions: Just thread and buttons! I had my buttons custom-made here in Nashville by a local lady who sells them through Textile Fabrics. Since my coating is SUPER thick (way too thick for those sad little button kits that you can buy), it needed some heavy-duty machinery to get the fabric on. I’ve used this service in the past for previous coat buttons, and the quality is excellent.
Sizing & Alterations: I cut the size 6 and sewed the coat exactly as drafted, except at the waistline where I used a 1/2″ seam allowance instead of the standard 5/8″ (just to give myself a tiny bit of eating room 😉 ). I only altered the length – removed 3″ from the hemline and 1″ from the sleeve length.

Here’s my original inspiration, in watercolor 🙂

I think it turned out pretty close, if not better! 🙂

Don’t you love the photos? These were taken by my friend and fellow knitter, Alannah Arnold, who was almost as excited about this coat as I was! Alannah and I meet with a group of ladies every Monday for a casual (and, um, booze-filled, haha!) knitting night at my favorite local bar. She’s listened to me talk about this coat for weeks at this point – and offered to take photos once it was done. Which is awesome, because they turned out WAY better than anything I could have shot in front of my shed!

I met with her in East Park, in East Nashville, to take these photos. That’s a feat in itself – anyone who knows me, knows I will kick and scream when it comes to crossing the river into East Nashville. Never mind that driving into East Nashville is like driving into Brooklyn – it’s actually not that bad (unless there’s a Titans game – if then, forget about it!), it’s just fun to complain about 🙂 Regardless, East Nashville has the prettiest fall trees, and this park is undeniably beautiful. So, I made some sacrifices (har har) and ended up with a pretty great set of pictures to match my pretty great coat! Yay!

Ooh, and I even found a Porsche while I was at it 🙂 haha!

If I haven’t already made it completely obvious – I’m SO happy with my finished coat! Sewing it up was so satisfying, and absolutely worth it. It is very dramatic and theatrical – so it’s a bit excessive for daily wear. I don’t think I’ll be bringing this to London, unfortunately, as it’s definitely not very practical (it’s too fitted to really accommodation multiple layers, plus I could see those bell sleeves getting real annoying real fast after 2 weeks of daily wear). However, it is the PERFECT topper for all these upcoming holiday parties that are just around the corner 😉

Let’s also not forget how this is one of few instances where sewing can actually save you money – this coat cost less than $200 in materials, whereas the original designer version has been rumored to run closer to $10,000. Sure, making a little cotton sundress will probably set you back more than whatever you would paid from a mall retailer – but knocking off couture? That’s where the savings really start to show 😉

I will leave you with this photo of me, wearing my knock-off designer coat, throwing leaves in front of a rich person’s house. Probably the same person who owns that Porsche, to be honest:

Be sure to check out the McCall Pattern Company blog to see Meg’s completed coat, if you haven’t already done so! Big thumbs up to everyone who participated in the sewalong – and big, huge thanks to Meg for agreeing to cohost this beast of a sewalong alongside me. Couldn’t have done it without you! 🙂 Don’t forget to use the hashtag #V1419sewalong so it will show up on this tagboard. We encourage you to upload your photos to the V1419 Flickr group, the Vogue Patterns Facebook page, and pin it to the Pinterest board

Didn’t join the sewalong but still want to make your own designer Ralph Rucci? Check out my V1419 tag and the McCall Pattern Company Blog for all the posts pertaining to this sewalong. I can’t wait to see everyone’s finished coats!

What do you think? Would you ever tackle a crazy long intense project like a coat? What about THIS coat? Man, I love making coats!

Disclaimer: My pattern was provided to me free of charge from the McCall Pattern Company, and the fabric was provided from Mood Fabrics as part of my monthly allowance for participating in the Mood Sewing Network. Still, I definitely made this entire coat myself – sooo, that should count for something 😉

Tags: coat, completed, hot damn this is my jam, McCall Pattern Company, Mood Fabrics, Mood Sewing Network, ralph rucci, silk, v1419, v1419 sewalong, wool

Comments 110 Comments
Categories completed projects - new, Mood Sewing Network, sewalong

V1419 Sewalong: Steps 64-86

10 Nov

Good morning, sewalongers! This is the week we finish up our coats – woohoo!! (and those of y’all who are not following the sewalong – this is the last week you have to skip a boring sewalong post! Woohoo!). Can you just feel the excitement radiating in the air? 😉

So, the good news is – this is the final construction post before we have our sharextravaganza next week. The bad news – it’s a HELLUVA post. Lots and lots of pictures (in advance: I’m soooo sorry! Tried to cull them down as much as possible. On the flip side, none of them are of me 😉 lolololol), lots of little fiddly steps here. On the flip side, this is all finishing – which means when it’s done, the coat is done – but expect this to take some time, especially since there is lots of hand sewing in this section.

Anyway, onto finishing!

The first thing you will want to do is sew the bias facing to both of the opening edges of the coat front, as well as along the neckline and across the hem. I’m not going to go into detail of how to do the facing – we’ve all done enough bias facing on this coat, I think most of us can do it in our sleep at this point 😉 – but I did want to mention a couple little tips that helped me.

Once I sewed the facing on and trimmed down the seam allowances, I pressed all the raw edges toward the facing, using lots of steam.

Then simply press the facing to the inside of the coat. You will want to hand baste this in place, which will give you greater control when top stitching (especially important at those coat front edges).

At the hem and neckline, you may find that where you are intersecting seams tends to be *very* bulky – like, so bulky that you can barely turn the facing to the inside. I used my scissors to chop out as much of the bulk as possible (being careful not to cut into the stitching line or outside of the seam allowances), and them hammered them down like crazy with my clapper, to make things very flat.

Actually, if you have a clapper – it’s a good idea to smack down those edges after you’ve top stitched them, to flatten them as much as possible and give them a nice sharp crease. This will make your coat look much more professional 🙂

Now, for the button holes! Fair warning – these took foreveeeeer to finish! Lots of fiddly pieces, lots of fiddly hand stitching. I know at this point, most of y’all are probably over this coat and just want to finish so it can be worn, but please take your time with these steps. The button holes are one of the most visible parts of the coat, and you don’t want them to look sloppy!

Remember when we sewed around the edges of where the button holes would go? Now you need to cut right in the middle of those stitches. I first used chalk to mark where the V would start, and then cut along the lines indicated. Cut right up to the stitching, but not through it.

You will have a little V flap at the inside end. Fold this to the inside and press.

To make the button hole binding, find those 4 bias pieces you cut, and press down one long edge about 1/4″. You will want to cut the binding into 20 pieces – 4 pieces will be 2.5″ long, and 16 pieces will be 2.75″ long. You should have enough binding to cut exactly the number of pieces needed (if for some reason you screw up and need more binding – just salvage a piece of leftover facing, and cut it in half at the fold. Y’all have lots of bias facing left over, right? I do hahaha). Fold in 1/4″ at short edges of each little piece and press. Yes, this part takes forever. Sorry.

On the bottom of your button hole, pin a piece of binding with the right sides facing and the raw edges matching. The edge that meets the front edge of the coat should be flush, the edge against the end of the button hole should extend a bit farther. Be aware of what binding goes on what button hole – the 2.5″ binding is for the top 2 button holes (on the left and right side of the coat front); the remaining binding is for the remaining button holes.

I went ahead and pinned the top binding as well, because I am impatient.

Sew the binding to the coat, stitching along your original stitching lines. I found it easier to do this from the inside, so I could make sure I was sewing in the correct place. When you get to the end of your stitching line – where the stitching pivots to the end of the button hole – stop and back stitch. Do not go any farther than the existing stitching line.

Your binding should look like this on the outside of your coat. Notice that the stitching does not go all the way across to the tip of the binding. This is good; it means we can pull the end of the binding to the inside.

Here it is from the inside.

Starting at the open end, fold the binding to the inside and pin into place. I pinned both top and bottom because – again, impatient. You could also work with one side at a time. Whatever is easier!

For the end of the binding that is by the V you clipped, pull all the binding to the inside of the coat and pin down. This should cover the V completely, but if not, you can always clip whatever is sticking out 🙂

Repeat for the bottom (or top). Your finished pinned button hole should look like this.

Here it is from the outside.

The next thing you nee to do is slipstitch alllllll those bindings invisibly to the inside of the coat. Yep! This part takes forever! I also stitched my bindings so the edges encased the edge of the coat front, as well as slip stitched the open ends together with a few stitches. When you get to where the binding covers the triangle, be sure to catch that in your stitches so the button hole is secure. Check from the front occasionally to make sure everything looks good, especially making sure that triangle is pushed all the way to the inside of the coat and not sticking out.

Once you’ve finished the torture that is slipstitching ALL THAT BINDING, give everything a good press (and maybe a smack with the clapper, too, if it needs it. Mine did!). We’re not done yet!

Next up is thread bartacks! Start by marking where the bartacks will go – you will have 4 total for each button hole – left and right (so a total of… 40. Woof.). There will be a bartack at each end of the button hole, plus another bartack 1/2″ from each end. I marked mind with chalk.

The bartacks will go faster/look better if you thread up with multiple strands. I used 3 strands of thread, and then doubled my needle, for a total of 6. You can also use embroidery floss – I just didn’t have any of the right color on hand.

Starting on the inside, make a small knot with your thread, or tack it in a couple spots to secure it. I made a small loop and then pulled the needle through it.

Pull the needle to the outside and stitch across the button hole to the other side, letting the thread connect the two sides. Make another knot on the inside (or, again, secure with a few stitches), and then pull the needle back to the outside.

To make the bartacks, loop your thread like so.

Then pull the needle through the loop to create a knot (same concept as a button hole stitch, or a blanket stitch).

Pull the loop until it knots at the end. Repeat this over and over until you have a chain of knots that completely covers the thread. This is your bartack. Do this 4 times for every button hole. Also, have a glass of wine while you’re doing this – you’ll be sitting for a hot minute 😉

Some bartack tips:
– You will get better as you do these! I recommend starting with the button side first, at the bottom button hole, so your practice attempts won’t be as easily seen 🙂 Of course, you could practice on scraps first – but, naw, not me!
– Don’t pull the knots too tight, or you will distort them and they won’t be as pretty 😦
– Try to make your knots in the same direction as you go – this will keep them uniform and hopefully prevent twisting!
– If at all possible, try to do these in one sitting. The repetition means you will get better as you do it, so if you complete them all in one sitting, you won’t need to go through multiple learning curves (than if you picked it up several times during the week).
– The original Rucci coat has the bartacks continue on the back side of the bound button holes as well. The instructions for this pattern only call for the bartacking in the front (which is what I did). If you want to mimic the original and bartack the back of the button holes – well, don’t let me stop you 🙂
– Don’t get too hung up on perfection – yes, you want these to look nice, but at the same time, most of them will be covered by the buttons. Not worth killing yourself over!

Once you’ve finished your loops, time to sew on those buttons! Sew the buttons in the middle of the binding on the left front, catching both bindings in the stitches. For the top button, sew it 1/2″ away from the edge (it won’t be quite in the middle).

You can also go ahead and sew those back buttons on the belt. The pattern actually has you make button holes first – which of course you can do, but I omitted mine.
One word of note about the belt – don’t try to cinch it in too tight, or you’ll create gathers on the coat sides. Pin the belt closed first, and try it on to make sure everything is smooth and flat.

Finally, all that’s left is the sleeves. Go ahead and hem them with the bias facing – same concept as the other hemming and facing we did in these steps.

The last thing we will do is make these little sleeve binding pieces, to cover the edge where all the crazy sleeve seams intersect. Cut 2 pieces that are approximately 1.5″ long by 1″ tall (or possibly taller, if your fabric is very thick and bulky – I cut mine 2″x2″, because my fabric required the extra room!). Fold one long edge under 1/4″ and press, and both short edges as well.

Sew the binding to the outside of the sleeve, with the right sides facing, at the point where all the seams intersect. Sew right along your topstitching line. If your fabric is bulky, you may want to trim down the seam allowance of this binding piece.

Turn the binding to the inside, wrapping around the sleeve hem and being sure that all folded edges are tucked under. Slipstitch around the 3 edges and press. Again, this is a good time to use your clapper to really flatten those seams. Gah, you guys must think I have stock in clappers at this point hahaha.

Your finished sleeve will look like this. Yes, some of my top stitching is wonky. Oh well!

Whew! That’s all for this post – AND THIS COAT! How’s everyone coming along with their coats? I’ve been loving all the progressing (and some completed!) coats that are popping up in the Flickr Group. You’re SO almost done!! If you want to show off your coat in our Parade of Coats next week (which, obvs, you should!), you have a few options – you can upload to the the Flickr Group, and you can also upload to the Pinterest Fan Gallery. Be sure to use the hashtag #v1419Sewalong so you’ll appear in our Tagboard, where we will also be pulling finished coat photos. Can’t wait to see everyone’s coats!! 😀

Tags: button holes, buttons, coat, McCall Pattern Company, ralph rucci, sewalong, tutorial, v1419, v1419 sewalong, vogue patterns

Comments 23 Comments
Categories sewalong

V1419 Sewalong: Steps 51-63

3 Nov

Good morning, Sewalongers! We only have a couple weeks left before the sewalong is complete – are you feeling excited? You should! Especially since this week is all about the welt pockets 😀

Meg will be covering the steps this week for creating your own beautiful welt pockets, so be sure to check out The McCall Blog for tutorials. Again, I’m just here to cheerlead and give some tips this week. I spent pretty much my entire Sunday wrestling with these pockets, but the good news is that they turned out quite lovely! And I have some advice to share, so listen up!

First and foremost, whether this is your first welt or your 50th welt, you absolutely need to practice making a welt pocket using your coat fabrics before you start hacking into the coat. It’s important to do this with your coating fabrics in particular, as they may act differently than other fabrics you’ve used in the past for welts. My wool coating fabric is pretty bulky, so I was able to sort out issues in my practice rounds, instead of on the coat itself.

I know, making practice welts kind of sucks! I’m SO glad I did it, though, because I don’t think my welts would have turned out nearly as nice if I hadn’t practiced a few times first. You don’t need much for the practice – I used a piece of coating that was about 8″x4″, a similarly sized piece of my contrast taffeta (for the pocket facing – don’t worry about cutting a pocket out of your fabric for the other side – unless you just reaaally think you need to practice sewing pockets), and one fabric welt. After my third practice welt, I felt confident enough to do the real thing on the coat.

For marking your coat pieces – here are a couple of tips. First of all, I wouldn’t necessarily rely on tracing the markings off the pattern. You can trace them to get a general *idea* of where the pockets need to hit, but for doing the actual marking (or cleaning up your markings, or re-adding them if they mostly rubbed off during the coat construction), just use a ruler and a piece of chalk. The welt is a rectangle, after all 🙂 The welt is 6″ long by 1/2″ wide, and the circle marking is approximately 2″ from the corner on the bottom line (please re-check these measurements against your pattern before marking – I’m going based on my size, which may be different than yours!). I used a straight ruler and this Clover chaco liner (well, mine is white, but same difference) for my markings. I like this particular liner because it doesn’t pull the fabric when it marks, and the chalk dust comes out very easily. I also like how fine the line comes out. Just a preference!

Once you’ve marked your rectangles (I don’t bother marking the center line or the v’s – but go ahead and mark those if you wish), it’s a good idea to thread-trace the markings with long basting stitches. I use silk thread for this purpose – I like how easy it is to remove, and I love that it doesn’t show a marking when you press over it. You may also use cotton thread if you don’t want to spring for silk (a spool is about $4, so not terribly expensive but also not really cheap!) – or even regular polyester, but definitely check that it doesn’t leave marks when it’s pressed. I also mark my dots with simple tailor’s tacks – just loop the thread over the marking a couple of times. Thread-tracing these markings means that they’ll be visible from *both* sides of the coat, and that they won’t rub off as you handle them. Thread trace the rectangles on both the coat and the pocket facing (the contrast).

One more thing: once you’ve thread-traced the welts on your coat, it’s a good idea to try the coat on and make sure they are an even height. Mine were ever-so-slightly off, but I was able to catch it before sewing on uneven welts. That would have been lame!

When making your welts, if your fabric is thick – try trimming the seam allowances with your scissors at an angle. This will make one seam allowance slightly longer than the other, which will prevent a ridge from showing when it’s turned right side out. Position the welts so that the shorter trimmed side faces the outside of the coat.

Also, with the welts – don’t aggressively trim and clip the seam allowances to nothing! You need a little bit there so the corner will have some structure when it’s turned right side out. I trim mine to a little less than 3/8″.

When turning the welts right side out, push the seam allowance to one side, like so.

Carefully turn the entire thing right side out, and gently use a point presser (or a knitting needle, or a butter knife, or whatever you have on hand) to push the corner out to a sharp angle. Then press, being careful not to drag the iron around – you don’t want to distort your welt.

Yay, sharp corners! As a side note – this was one of the practice welts that did not have the edges trimmed at an angle. See the ridge showing through? Yuck.

When it’s time to sew the pocket facing to the welt+coat, you’ll be glad you did those thread tracings. I checked both sides constantly to be sure that I was exactly on the lines for both coat & pocket facing. I also went the extra mile and hand-basted the facing on, using a different color of silk basting thread. This took foreeeeever, but it’s super precise and I think it’s a big reason why my pockets turned out so nice. Then you can just sew right on top of the basting lines and not have to worry about pins getting in the way (or, in my case – distorting the fabric because of the sheer amount of bulk in that area).

Once you’ve sewn everything down for reals, remove all the basting and thread tracing. Cut and clip as indicated in the pattern – and don’t be afraid to get VERY close to the stitching line when clipping those v’s for the welt. This will prevent the coat from having a crease or fold at the corners where the welt intersects. Then just press the hell out of everything. It can be a little tricky, just because there is so much coat going on – just use lots of steam and take your time. I found that I got the best press when I used the top edge (the handle part) of my clapper and laid whatever section I was pressing over it. The narrow surface meant that the iron was pressing only the parts I wanted to press, and not pressing wrinkles into the rest of the coat.

Once I had everything pressed and done, I basted the welts shut while I finished the pockets, so they wouldn’t gape and flap and potentially stretch out.

Sewing the pocket and binding is pretty easy. The only thing I changed was that I stitched in the ditch to attach the binding, rather than slip-stitching by hand. Just a personal preference! Bonus for those of us who are using underlining – when it’s time to invisibly sew the pocket to the coat, you can just grab the underlining and not worry about your stitches being invisible from the outside. Yay!

Here’s the finished pocket on the inside. Doesn’t it look luxe?

And, of course, my beautiful welts. I am so happy with how they turned out! Definitely worth the effort!

Don’t forget to check out The McCall Blog for Meg’s tutorial on sewing the welts! My biggest tip? TAKE YOUR TIME. Don’t try to rush this section and expect pristine welts. That in mind, you also should not be too scared to actually do this part! They’re just welts – practice a few times, follow the directions, utilize hand-basting, and you’ll be fine 🙂 If all else fails, you can always throw a patch pocket over the mess 😛 haha! (no, seriously, I tell myself this EVERY TIME I make welt pockets!)

How is everyone doing this week with the coat? Any questions?

Tags: coat, McCall Pattern Company, ralph rucci, sewalong, tips and tricks, tutorial, v1419, v1419 sewalong, Welt pockets

Comments 32 Comments
Categories sewalong

V1419 Sewalong: Cutting and Prepping

13 Oct

Good morning, sewalongers! (sewalongees?) Today we are going to go over the final prep work before we start sewing (next week! Eep!). This is the last slow post of the sewalong, which gives you another week to perfect your muslin and choose your fabric. Of course, these posts will also be up indefinitely so don’t feel like you have to rush to keep up!

The very first thing you need to do – yes, before you do anything else with that lovely fabric – is pretreat your fabric. How you pretreat your fabric will depend on the fiber you chose, as well as how you plan on cleaning the coat in the future. For those of you who are sewing wool (like meee!), this means you need to get any shrinkage out of your fabric *before* you cut the pattern pieces – otherwise, once you start steaming that bad boy, you may end up shrinking pieces and that’s no good. There are lots of ways to pretreat wool – and none of them involve washing the fabric (please don’t do that!). You can either steam the piece yourself (this involves lots of steam and probably a lot of time), take it to the dry cleaner and have them pretreat it (this involves money)(and also dry cleaning), or you can shrink it up in the dryer (which is what I do). Here’s a blog post outlining the entire process, but basically – you just need to throw your wool in the dryer (finish the edges if necessary to prevent unraveling), add a couple of towels that are soaked in hot water (and then wrung out, so they’re not dripping) and blast the dryer on high heat for however long it takes before everything is dry. Easy! This is the method I use for all my wool fabrics. If you are at all hesitant, try it out on a swatch first 🙂

For other fabric types that are not wool – you may not need to pretreat (unless you plan on washing the coat in the washing machine? If then, defintely prewash that shit!). If using a cotton or silk, you may want to at least steam the crap out of it just to be sure there is no shrinkage. Polys should be fine and not shrink at all.

Once you’ve pretreated your fabric in whatever way need, then it’s time to cut! I’m not going to go over cutting here – I assume anyone brave enough to tackle sewing a coat is probably fine to cut fabric without guidance 🙂 – but if you need a refresher, here is an old post I wrote about cutting and marking your pattern pieces. One thing I did notice while I was cutting my fabric – I was able to reconfigure the layout and use slightly less fabric. Don’t be afraid to change up the layout if your fabric is wide enough, just be sure that you are keeping all the pattern pieces on the proper grain.

If you are including an underlining for your coat, you will need to cut out pieces 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 & 9 from your underlining fabric.

For the contrast – specifically, all those bias pieces – I found it easier to draw the pattern pieces directly on the fabric, rather than try to pin a bunch of stuff and then try to cut a straight line and nope.

The long, straight pieces – I just measured them and use a ruler and marking pencil to draw them on my taffeta. For the big bias contrast pieces (those giant parallelograms), I pinned down the pattern piece, traced around the edges with my marking pencil, and then used a ruler to draw in the lines 2″ apart (as they are on the pattern piece). I did all this on the flat fabric before I cut anything out, and I think it made things a lot easier!

Once you’ve cut out all your pattern pieces, you will need to apply the underlining (assuming you are underlining – if not, skip ahead and start marking your pieces). Underlining is very easy. It is also very time-consuming – so I recommend watching some crappy TV or something equally entertaining while you do it 🙂 For this sewalong, I won’t be going over underlining, but here is a tutorial if you need one. Some things to keep in mind:
– Sometimes you can get away with basting the pieces together by machine. This coat is not the time to try that method. Because the pieces are very large, you run the risk of shifting your fabric – which will give you bubbles or hang weird if you’re not careful. Try to keep things as flat as possible. Meaning: sit at a table, underline by hand. Watch a movie. Drink some wine. Whatever makes you happy!
– I use silk thread to underline, because it removes very easily. I also happen to have several spools on hand in strange colors, so that’s a big part of the reason. I realize silk thread is a bit expensive, so don’t feel like you have to break your budget on some thread that’s about to get pulled out as soon as you sew a seam. Use whatever you got! I would recommend using a threat in a contrasting color, just so it’s easier to see/remove.
– Feel free to use giant stitches. You’re just basting the pieces together to keep them from shifting when you sew them. Big stitches are ok – and they’re easier to remove!
– Sew well within your seam allowances, especially if your fabric shows pin holes (mine does!).
– I like to underline first, *then* mark the pattern pieces on the wrong side. You can also mark, then underline. Up to you – I just think the former is easier! Don’t freak out if you accidentally snip your basting when you cut notches – it’s ok!

See? I did it too. No big deal!

Once you’ve finished underlining (or have skipped ahead), you will need to mark your pieces. It is very important to get every stitch line (for the welts and the button holes), dot and notch – it’ll make things muuuuch easier to match up when we start sewing. You may want to use wax tracing paper and a rotary wheel for the lines, and a marking pen (or tailor’s tacks) for the dots. Just snip the notches. We won’t judge you.

Ok, bias binding! This is the same method outlined on the Coletterie, btw – except you are starting with a parallelogram piece, and not creating one from a square (if that makes sense).

You should have 3 parallelograms with 2″ diagonal lines drawn on the wrong side of the fabric. Matching the notches and markings, pin the two angled edges together, right sides together, to form a strange off-center tube. The edges will not match at the ends.

Sew the seam you just pinned. I used 1/4″ because – well, that’s what I always use. I think this pattern was drafted for 5/8″ – even at the bias binding – and if you sew with that amount, you will need to trim it down to 1/4″ after sewing.

Press the seam open.

Starting at once end, begin cutting along the line you drew. You should end up with a looooong string of continuous bias. Do this for all 3 parallelograms.

Once you’ve finished cutting all your bias strips, fold them in half with the wrong sides together and press.
(I promise that big yellow spot on my ironing board cover is not pee. That’s actually what happens when you put your iron on top of a piece of tailor’s wax. Whoops.)

You should end up with a big pile of bias strips. Mine kind of look like intestines. Cool.

Finally, you will want to staystitch and reinforce your coat pieces as directed in the instructions (steps 1-3 & step 35). For both – use a slightly shorter stitch length (I use 2.0 vs my standard 2.5) and be sure to backstitch at both ends. For staystitching, sew 1/2″ away from the edge. For reinforcing, sew along the stitching line at 5/8″.

Here are the pieces you will be prepping. Lines marked in blue are reinforcement stitching, lines marked in yellow are staystitching.

ONCE LAST THING: Once you’ve reinforced all those tricky edges, you need to clip the seam allowances all the way to the dot.

Clip to the stitching line, but do not clip the stitching line. This will make it easier to sew those tricky sleeve seams.

And that’s it! Whew! Sorry for the post overload today. Oh, I almost forgot – here’s my fabric!

These are the swatch cards I got from Mood. The wool coating I chose is piece piled on the very top (4th one down). It’s a nice, thick virgin wool coating.

I am using 2 different silk taffetas – the brighter red will be the underlining, and the darker red is the binding and contrast.

How are we doing this week, seawlongers? Any questions about the cutting or prep?

Tags: coat, cutting, marking, pinning, prep, sewalong, silk, tutorial, underlining, v1419, v1419 sewalong, wool

Comments 30 Comments
Categories sewalong, work in progress

V1419 Sewalong: My Muslin

6 Oct

Good morning, V1419 Sewalongers – and Happy Muslin Day! Yes, today is all about the muslin – a very important part of coat construction (some of y’all make refer to it as a toile, same difference!). After all, you don’t want to spend all this time and money making a coat that doesn’t fit once it’s finished… do you? (if the answer to that is no, then, um… do you want to share some of your spare time and money with?? haha!)

Meg is handling All Things Muslin over at The McCall Pattern Company blog, so check out her post for advice and tips. Me, I’m just here to be your personal cheerleader this week – as well as share my muslin! Wanna see?

Some notes & thoughts:
– I started with the size 8, which seems to fit pretty well right out of the envelope! The small bit of pulling you see under the bust is not noticeable in real life (and, god, these pictures are awful. I took them three times and these are the best you’re gonna get. Something about shooting a *white* muslin is just… ugh. And yes, I even tried against a not-white background. No dice, looked worse. Deal with this.), and some of the wrinkles were actually pressed into the muslin. I think that, overall, this looks good, and I will be making no further adjustments other than shortening the length and the sleeves. Thoughts?
– Notice when I said I made a size 8? That’s at least 1-2 sizes bigger than what I usually cut in Vogue patterns – this lady runs a little snug! For what it’s worth, my body measurements correspond very closely to the size measurements for the 8 (I’m about 1/2″ bigger all around). If you’re hung up on sizing, I suggest start with the size that works for your measurements and make a mock to see what direction to take the fitting. I know this goes against everything I’ve ever told y’all about using the finished measurements to start, but maybe Vogue has been hearing our cries about the extra ease? 🙂
– I used a medium weight muslin to make this mock-up, and it’s a bit more drapey than the fabric that I chose. This is fine, as I’ve tried on the original and I like the way the dramatic shape looks on me – but if you’re still debating whether or not to use a drapey fabric, try making the muslin with a fabric that has a similar hand to get a feel for how you like it.
– When trying on your muslin, make sure you are wearing the same types of clothing you plan on wearing with the finished coat – for me, that’s a long sleeve tshirt and jeans. If you try this on with a lightweight tank top, for example, the fit will be totally different (and, um, might not work with a big sweater!). Speaking of big sweaters – this style of coat is NOT the thing to wear with your giant chunky knit warmest wool pullover. It’s supposed to be very sleek and fitted – the type of fabulous coat that you would wear over a cocktail dress. If you have your heart set on making this an every day winter coat to wear over multiple layers, you may want to consider sizing up to accommodate the extra bulk.
– Need to make some adjustments? Not a big deal! While this pattern does not have traditional style lines, it *does* mark the bust apex and waistline, so that will give you a general idea where to add your adjustments. Due to the time restraints we have for this sewalong, we will not be covering flat pattern adjustments. A few people have asked whether or not this particular pattern can handle a FBA (full bust adjustment) – and the answer is yes! You’ll need to first remove the lower skirt portion of the coat, as well as the sleeves, make your FBA (I like to use the method explained in Fit for Real People)… then rotate out the dart you create to retain the original lines of the pattern, and reattach the sleeves and skirt (smoothing and blending your lines as needed). Don’t know how to rotate out a dart? Here are some links that you may find useful: The Mahogany Stylist, Vicki Kate Makes, The Sewaholic Blog (with extra links!). Alternately, there are zillions of tutorials online of how to do a FBA/rotate a dart – just Google and pick your favorite!
– For length adjustments – you can actually just hack it right off the bottom of the sleeve/length. Which is exactly what I plan on doing, fyi.
– If you’re one size in your bust and another at the waist, you can grade the sizes together to get a better fit. There’s a brief write-up on how to do this here on my blog, but essientally you’re just drawing a line to connect size x to size y to seamlessly blend between the two.

Finally – we have an Offical V1419 Coat Sewalong Flickr Group! Whoop whoop! The group is open, so please feel free to join and upload your photos to share with everyone – fabric selections, muslins, anything V1419 coat related! Additionally, there are forums if you need to ask questions or advice on fitting or selecting fabric. Meg & I will be manning the group and forums as needed, but please feel free to jump in and help if you see a question that you know the answer to! 🙂

Oh, and don’t forget the Mood Fabrics discount code, if you haven’t already purchased your fabric. “lladybird1013” is good through 10/13/14 for 10% off your order (not including PV codes or dress forms). If you missed the V1419 fabric selection post, you can see it here.

Don’t forget to read up on Meg’s muslin post over at the McCall blog! How is everyone’s muslins coming along?

Tags: coat, fba, McCall Pattern Company, Mood Fabrics, muslin, ralph rucci, v1419, v1419 sewalong, vouge patterns

Comments 25 Comments
Categories misc

V1419 Sewalong: Fabric Selection

29 Sep

Good morning & happy Monday, sewalongers! Today, we are going to talk about my favorite part of coat-making (or, really – any sewing project 🙂 ) – fabric selection! Forreal, I could spend all day perusing fabrics and never feel like I’ve seen enough!
(psst – if you’re just here for the discount code, it’s at the bottom of this post 🙂 FYI)

Before we get too ahead of ourselves, though, let’s take a minute and look at the original garment:

A couple things that immediately come to mind when I see this picture-
1. As far as coats go, there is not a lot of ease in this guy. This is not your wear-everywhere-and-pile-the-thick-sweaters-underneath sort of coat – it’s very fitted and the shape is quite dramatic. Something to keep in mind while choosing your fabric!
2. To get that dramatic shape, we need a choose a fabric with quite a stiff drape and a very firm hand. The original coat is made of a sort of heavy wool garbadine backed with a stiff wool flannel. The resulting fabric is very substantial – stiff and sturdy enough to hold it’s shape. If you make this coat in a fabric with a softer drape, you will not get the same end result. This could be good or bad, depending on how you want the finished coat to look!

Still having problems wrapping your head around the whole drape factor? Don’t know if you even want a coat that’s this dramatic and structured? Go ahead and start your muslin, using a fabric that is a similar weight to what you have in mind (if you can’t find muslin fabric with a stiff enough drape, try inexpensive cotton twill or even home decor fabric). That will give you a good idea of the drape you need to get the coat you want. For more information on fabric drape, check out this post I wrote a couple months ago!

Now let’s talk about possible fabric choices! With all big projects like this, I URGE you to swatch before you commit to anything! You don’t want to spend a lot of money on coating fabric, only to find out that the drape wasn’t as stiff as you were anticipating (been there, done that! And you can’t return fabric most of the time, argh!). Especially when it comes to the contrast for this coat – you want to make sure the colors work together, that the coating is the right weight/drape/hand, and that you actually *like* the way it looks in real life. I’m recommending these fabrics based on the website descriptions, but please don’t take my word for the gospel until you’ve actually touched it in real life.

Also, please keep in mind that this coat is UNLINED. You will want to choose a fabric that can easily slide over your arms – or you will need to underline the coat with something that serves that purpose. As far as I know, there’s not a way to completely line this particular coat (with all the insides hidden and all that). We will be covering underlining in this sewalong, we will NOT be covering lining. Consider yourself warned!

FOR WINTER-WEIGHT COATS WITH A STIFF DRAPE:

For a dense and warm coat with a nice stiff hand, you can’t go wrong with virgin wool. This fabric is not quite as stiff as the original – it will still hold that nice bell shape at the sleeves and skirt, but with softer folds. Virgin wool is actually what I bought for my coat – in a beautiful lipstick red 🙂

Another great option that will provide lots of warmth and structure is wool felt. Definitely swatch this – you don’t want it to be too thick for all those seams!

Similar to wool felt but not as dense is heavy flannel coating. Check out that purple!

I really love wool twill for a nice dense coating. Wool twill comes in many weights, so make sure it’s heavy enough to give the structure this coat needs.

Here’s another nice, heavy wool twill – this one is from Marc Jacobs!

Classic wool coatings, such as this dark turquoise solid coating will also work, as long as they are stiff enough to give the effect you want.

This plum coating is pre interfaced!

Looking forsomething a little more fancy? Up the luxe factor with this italian velvet.

Another great fabric option for this pattern (one that I believe Meg is using for her coat – although hers is this beautiful double-sided brocade!) is brocade. I love this metallic brocade!

Also, this floral brocade if you’re dying to stand out a little more.

Or you could go all out with this bright pink ribbed silk brocade, because YES.

FOR WINTER-WEIGHT COATS WITH A SOFTER DRAPE:

How gorgeous is this silk wool? This fabric would give you a much softer drape than the ones above – think less of an exaggerated bell shape for the skirt and sleeves, and softer folds at the arms.

Of course, you can’t go wrong with black cashmere coating – a true classic!

Doesn’t this wool cashmere coating just look SO snuggly? It’d be like wearing a blanket 24/7.

For a lighter wool weight with a very soft drape, consider boiled wool. I just love this bright purple color!

FOR A LIGHTER-WEIGHT COAT:

Those of y’all with milder winters – no worries, I’ve got ya covered! You have a few options for making this coat in a lighter weight, while still retaining the dramatic shape. First up – consider cotton twill! I love this organic cotton twill – especially that hot pink color, yes! – but any cotton twill will work as long as it’s heavy enough to hold it’s shape. Try to avoid anything with lycra (or any stretch), as it will make sewing this coat more difficult.

You could also make a very beautiful, very dressy lightweight coat out of silk faille.

Want the shine of the silk without the price tag? Try cotton sateen – again, be sure you are getting one with no stretch and a heavier weight.

I’m thinking this coat would also look really cool (in a super casual way) if it was made up in denim! Am I crazy? Give it some gold topstitching and brass buttons and it’s like the fanciest denim jacket in the world. This heavyweight Theory denim even comes pre-interfaced!

Obviously there are many, many more options for coating – including non-natural fibers (I’m not linking these because I personally don’t like to wear or sew with polyester anything! Sorry!) – but this should be enough to get the ideas flowing. In the meantime, let’s talk about underlining and contrast fabrics.

FOR UNDERLINING AND/OR CONTRAST:
For my coat, I knew I needed to underline with something because I’d otherwise have a difficult time pulling the coat on. I initially thought about using silk chaurmeuse, because I just love it, but ultimately decided to stick with the stiff drape theme and use silk taffeta. Silk taffeta is also recommended for all the contrast (as is chaurmeuse, but just between you and me – I don’t recommend the latter. Unless you just looove sewing bias chaurmeuse binding; in that case, don’t let me stop you!), so I actually bought two colors. I love silk taffeta! Obviously, you can use poly taffeta if that’s all your budget allows – but I like the added warmth that silk provides, so that’s why I went with that. Anyway, if you are underlining – you will want to buy the same amount of underlining as you are coating fabric. For contrast, buy whatever the pattern instructs you to buy.

Check out this kelly green silk taffeta from Oscar de la Renta! Swanky! For something a little more understated, there is also this caviar black silk taffeta from Ralph Lauren.

Love the look of silk taffeta but hate the price? There are also some beautiful polyester taffetas available, including this cool checked taffeta. This coat really isn’t suitable for plaids as the outside fabric – but as far as the contrast is concerned? Go for it!

For those of y’all who are not underlining and only need contrast for the binding, you might also consider shantung or dupioni. On a super budget? Check out cotton sateen.

Another thing to consider with the contrast fabric – there is contrast on both the outside of the coat (for the bound button holes, belt, and pocket), as well as the inside (bound seams). Keep in mind that, while the pattern is written for all contrast to be the same fabric – you don’t have to sew your coat that way. Use the fancy stuff for the outside, and bind the inside with something fun (even a woven cotton, if that’s your thing.). You’re the designer here! Just make sure to swatch so you know that you like the way your contrast looks next to your main fabric.

Couple more things, while on the fabric subject!
– Concerned about warmth, but don’t want to make the coat too bulky? Stick with natural fibers (wool coating, silk underlining) and consider interlining your coat with silk organza for an additional layer of warmth.
– Found your dream fabric but it’s just a *smidge* too drapey? Get some good interfacing and block-fuse that baby! Fashion Sewing Supply has a great super crisp interfacing, or even fusible hair canvas. FYI, this coat does not call for interfacing at all – so you only need to buy it if your fabric requires some extra heft.

Whew! I think that’s enough fabric talk for today. For sticking through it this far, I’ve got a discount for ya! Use the code “lladybird1013” to get 10% off your entire order at Mood Fabrics (not including PV codes or dress forms). This code is good through 10/13/14, so you’ve got time to swatch 🙂

I promise I will share photos of my fabric as soon as I receive it (still stalking the mailbox, daily. Ha!). In the meantime – what about you? What fabrics are you eyeballing? Do you have any fun ideas for the contrast? Is your coat a lighter weight? Let’s talk!

One last thing – time to announce the Sewtionary Giveaway winner! Lucky number generator says:

Congratulations, Jin! Crossing your scissors apparently worked 🙂 I’ll be in touch to get that book out to ya asap 🙂 Everyone else – if you’d like to pick up your own copy of the Sewtionary, you can order a signed copy at the Sewaholic website. The Sewtionary is also available on Amazon!

Tags: coat, discount, fabric, fabric hoarding, gorgeous fabrics, McCall Pattern Company, Mood Fabrics, ralph rucci, sewalong, v1419, v1419 sewalong, vogue