SoleCrafts: Pattern Review Sewing Bee Round 2

So I talked here about entering the Pattern Review Sewing Bee. As I said at the end of that post I did in fact get through to round 2 of this competition. The challenge for Round 2 was to make a garment cut on the bias (a 45deg angle).

As with most other people (or those who sew anyway) when I hear bias cut I automatically think about a slinky dress that clings to all your curves or of stripes/plaids cut on an angle to make cool patterns. Of course I did not want to do the obvious for a competition so I started thinking about what else I could do. The first two things I thought of were either a pair of pants, or a coat. I took myself to the computer and started looking for inspiration. One of the first things I found was this sewing pattern.

I really liked the look of this so I decided that I would try and make something similar. An A line swing coat.

Then I had to figure out what material to use. I went down to my fabric stash and started searching through and found a piece of material that I had almost forgotten about. Its an upholstery fabric that I picked up quite a while ago at our local discount fabric place. I'm not entirely sure about the fiber content, but a burn test showed that it is probably a cotton velvet and polyester/cotton Jaquard type fabric. I bought 2 yards or it thinking that it would make a nice coat, but then could never figure out what sort of pattern it would work for so it's sat in my stash ever since.

I then needed to create a pattern for this coat. I knew that I wanted the entire thing to be one piece that just wrapped all the way around. I figured that the most important thing would be to get the shoulders to fit. A while ago I made a coat for a friend using a similar weight fabric from Butterick pattern 5944 - I knew that the shoulders of this would fit me so I used this as a starting point.

I used the back pattern piece to trace the back neckline and armholes at size 14 onto a sheet of paper (I was on limited time and had no large paper on hand so ended up using a roll of christmas wrapping paper to create my pattern - economical and festive). I then used the front pattern piece to continuously trace the front armhole and front neckline on either side of the back. I then cut under the arm and spread the pieces out to the point where the tops of the armholes just touched to create the A line shape of the coat. I now had two fronts and one back. To create the asymmetrical front I cut one front piece off at an angle from the front shoulder across the body. The other side was cut at a similar angle starting from the center front point.

To test the pattern I originally cut it out of an old sheet, but I found that the sheet had a lot more drape than the fabric I wanted to use, so turned to an old blue and white checked vinyl table cloth to make a second muslin - its amazing what you can come up with when you're under the gun.

My muslin showed that the armholes and sleeves were too tight whilst the shoulders were much too wide. I lowered the bottom of the armhole by about 3/4 inch and also took about 3/4 inch off the outside width of the shoulder. I also lowered the back and front necklines by around 3/8". The sleeves from this pattern were way too tight around the upper arm. I decided that I wanted a two piece sleeve to get a good fit and shape so used my sleeve pattern from Simplicity 1732. However this has a very puffed sleeve head so I used the sleeve head shape from the original sleeve pattern and combined the two patterns into one.

Once I was happy with the base pattern I added a rolled mandarin collar also based on the Butterick pattern 5944.

My main pattern piece was laid on my fabric with the true bias running down the center back line of the pattern. The sleeve and collar pieces were also cut on the true bias.

Once this was done, the actual sewing of the garment was quite easy. The two shoulder seams, the two seams on the arms and then set the sleeve into the coat and it was done.

However I wanted to make sure the coat was useful for our cold New England winters, so I decided to line the entire coat. To create the lining I used the same pattern pieces to cut a bring purple satin and a layer of warm and natural batting. I then quilted these two layers together in a diamond pattern. The lining was sewed together in the same way at the main garment and then it was attached to the coat at the neckline (with the collar piece sandwiched between the two layers) and along the front edges.

I then had to decided how to finish off my coat. I remembered an old skirt that I made years ago in my teens. I had splurged and bought real velvet and made it up into a skirt. I then accidentally threw it into the wash and the velvet became all splotchy. Still I refused the throw it out and its sat in my fabric stash ever since. I pulled out the old skirt and it was actually a really good colour match - I decided that the blotchyness would not be noticeable in bias binding form so I cut myself a 200" strip of velvet bias binding. I used the binding to finish off the angled front edge of the coat, and then used it to finish the sleeves and the hem as well.

All good winter coats need a big pocket as I tend not to carry a purse in winter but throw everything in my coat pockets. As there were no seams to put a pocket in this coat I decided to add a welt pocket I used some of my red velvet fabric to create the welt, and positioned it so that it was at 90deg to the pattern on the front of the coat.

Then I just had to figure out how to keep the coat closed. I had originally planned to make it a button closure, but then I realised that a zipper would be a lot easier, so I sewed a black separating zipper at and angle just under the front edge of the coat.