Now I had made a deal with myself. I had to go to the fabric store to pick up some zippers and fabric for my sewing class but I wasn't going to buy anything for me....I wasn't......But the minute I saw this fabric that went out the window. I didn't even hesitate - I had to have this fabric.
So we may as well talk fabric. This is an upholstery fabric - I always seem to gravitate to upholstery fabric for my coats.The background fabric has a really soft brushed flannel like feel - I have no idea of the actual content but its woven in a two toned beige twill pattern. Over the top is this beautiful embroidery in black white and blue. Its a stunning pattern - very graphic - flowers but not florally if that makes sense.
Obviously I had no idea what I was going to do with the fabric - just that I needed it - so I bought up big - I think I got 5 or 6 meters just in case I decided on using a full length flared coat pattern. The fabric was 60"wide, but there were big panels down each side that didn't have embroidery on them so I'm happy I bought the extra.
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Long boring post about my design and drafting process - if you just want photos of the finished product feel free to skip to the end.
*****************************************************************************The fabric then sat in my stash for about a month whilst I decided just what I wanted to do with it.
My first thought was of McCalls 7478 which I had used to make a coat for my friend. But I just made a new full length fit and flared coat in January so decided I probably did't need another one - especially as I haven't found myself reaching for that coat as much as I expected.
But I do like my winter coat to be at least 3/4 length - OK so I have my length determined - somewhere around the knee. Now onto pattern. I started trawling through patterns.
I found the burda style 6596 pattern. The longer version looked similar to what I was looking for. slightly flared skirt, hood zipper up the front, knee length.
Then there was Burda Bouclé Coat 138 | 09/16. I love the back of this coat with the pleats.
I can't make a decision I want all of these features, but a pattern with all these features doesn't exist so I decided that once again I was going to have to draft a new pattern.
I sat down and started sketching and came up with this:
For the bodice I decided to start with my rainbow zipper dress pattern. This is basically the shape I wanted but with zero ease. Now I had to figure out how much ease I wanted to add.
I went through my closet to look at what works and doesn't in my existing coats. I find that I'm not reaching for my fitted coats - I like the ones that are much more loose fitting. In the ended I decided to add about 4.5 - 5 inches of ease.
To do this I used this website. I started by rotating about 1/2"out of the princess seam at the arm hole. The dropped the armhole down by 1" and out by 0.75" and then add 1" down each of the side seams.
On the center back seam I added about 1/8" at the lower edge tapering to nothing at the neckline and in the front I added about 1/4" to the center front seam.
I lowered the waistline at the back by about 2 inches (It's still probably an inch too high - if I were make it again I think I'd lower it more). In the front I lowered the waistline 2" at the side seams and about 4" at the center front joining the two points with a straight line to give the V shape to the waistline at the front.
I then had to figure out the sleeves. I wanted to make sure that they were wide enough so that the coat slips on easily and comfortably so I redrew my sleeve pattern adding width to account for the lowered arm hole and also the entire way down the sleeve. I added a sleeve dart at the back of the sleeve for a bit better shaping of the sleeve.
Next up the hood. This only needed a little tweaking from the zipper dress pattern. The zipper dress pattern had the hood starting a good 2 or so inches down the front neckline but for this coat I wanted the neckline extended up all the way so I raised the neckline by about 1-1.5" and took the corresponding amount out of the front hood piece.
I cut this pattern out of some old left over fabric I was donated by our local town hall (and very appropriate to the season) - Its about the right weight and I wont miss it. I was pleasantly surprised at how well this bodice fitted. It went on and off easily enough without being too oversized.
Next, the skirt. I started by cutting a full width of fabric about 29" long. I folded it in half and then cut the same angle at the center front as is on my bodice. I started pinning my fabric at the front and worked my way around to the back and then had to figure out what to do with the extra fabric.
I tried a number of different pleat combinations before deciding on just one big inverted box pleat. I had originally planned to put side seams in the skirt but having done the skirt this way I was quite happy with the way it looked and decided to stick with this method. This meant I wouldn't be able to do side seam pockets but I was sure I'd figure out something else.
They actually have a tutorial for installing this so I followed it, but found that doing it this way I ended up with a non symmetrical front. The placket has one edge on the center line but then the rest of it is off to one side. I could probably figure out mathematically how much I would have to take off one side and add to the other to get the placket in the center, but then the zipper wouldn't be centered...plus I was feeling lazy so I tried a different arrangement with the front so that zipper is inserted between two panels and then the placket extends from the outside of one panel to the outside of the other. I was much happier with this - I means everything is nice and symmetrical.
For future reference all seams were sewn with a 3/8" seam allowance except for the arm scythe with is 1/2" and the zipper where the edge of the seam is aligned with the edge of the zipper and stitched as close to the teeth as possible.
The only slightly tricky part was the front zipper. I had to remove some width across the front to account for the width of the zipper panels.
Before I put the zipper placket on I interfaced it with a medium weight interfacing and inserted white snaps on the underside aligning with snaps on one of the zipper panels so I can snap the placket closed but there are no snaps visible from the front of the garment.
When I went to pleat the skirt at the back I found that I actually had a bit more fabric than I had had with my muslin - my actual fabric was wider than my muslin material so after again trying a number of different pleat combination I finally decided to go for one inverted box pleat in the center and then another pleat off to each side. I stitched all of the pleas down for about 2" from the top just to keep them in place as I found that pressing wasn't doing all that much with this fabric it was too spongy.
The next step was to add pockets. My original thought was that I would add welt pockets where the welt was angled to match the front seam but I just wasn't sure about how comfortable those pockets would be and after much experimenting I decided to add patch pockets. The shape of the patch pocket is based on the top hood patterns piece (I forgot I only need 1 of each hood piece and cut the double layer so I had an extra piece hanging around when I went to make the pockets).
The neckline is now the pocket opening and the top curve is the outside of the pocket. I trimmed the sides of the hood piece down so the angle along the top of the pocket matched the angle of the front waist seam and the other side of the hood was trimmed so that it is now vertical with the ground. I lined each pocket with some stash Rayon cut 1/8" smaller than the main pocket piece so that when its turned inside right the rayon doesn't show around the edges, and then hand stitched the pockets in place so that there is no visible top stitching.
I knew from the start that I wanted to line my hood with some of the left over cotton velvet I have in stash so I cut out those pieces and sewed them together and onto the hood. I decided at this point that I didn't want any visible top stitching on my coat so the hood lining was simply attached at the front seam and pressed under. I then decided to also use the velvet as a facing and cut a facing 3" wide to go down the front of the coat and around the neckline, this attaches directly to the zipper so there are no zipper panels on the inside of the garment.
The problem now was that I didn't have anything suitable for a lining. So back to the fabric store I went. Now I usually got for brightly patterned and colour fabric for a lining, but with the strong pattern on the outside of this coat I decided to go for a plain bright aqua blue silk for the lining.
Whilst I was at the store I wanted to look for something to interline it with as well. I originally thought fleece like my original big coat but through it might end up too bulky, so then thought of warm and natural cotton batting, but then had the brilliant idea of interlining with a suit weight wool. Its light, but warm and breathable - sounds like a plan now to find the right one. My fabric store has a whole table full of wool offcuts at $2.99/yard but I wasn't sure which pieces were 100% wool and which were poly. Thankfully the lady working that day is really nice and not only did she cut me a swatch to do a burn test on and lent me a lighter to do the burn test but also came out with me to help me light it. The first three fabrics I tried ended up being more poly than wool, but then I found this beautiful light weight blue wool and that one burned beautifully to ash - not a plastic edge in sight - I had my winner - and hey blue it matches beautifully - even if no one but me will ever know.
Now to finish of my coat. I remade the whole coat minus the hood out of the blue wool and basted in in place down the front edges and around the neckline. No photos of this as its totally enclosed - I forgot to take photos as I went.
Then I moved onto the lining. I was feeling lazy at this point and rather than remake my pattern pieces with out the facings I decided to just put the whole pattern piece on and cut the fabric along the facing line marked - it wasn't pretty but it worked well enough. I added a 1" wide ease pleat at center back.
Because the lining fabric was a lot narrower than the main fabric I had to use one and a half lengths of the fabric for the skirt which ended up being wider than main skirt - which wasn't a problem until I came to hem the skirt - more on that later. As the lining was a much lighter weight fabric I decided to go for 7 smaller darts on either side of the center line rather than one big dart like I did with the wool interlining.
I wanted piping between the lining and the facing but I had forgotten to buy any - rather than taking another trip back to the fabric store I picked up some cording whilst I was out and made my own using a black poly satin I had in stash cut into bias strips.
I attached my facing to my lining and then finally my facing to the outer coat along the zipper and to the hood lining around the neckline.
Now how to finish the sleeves. My original drawing had little straps around the cuff and I was originally planning on adding these, but in the end I decided with all the pattern they'd probably just get lost anyway and left them off. I did however decided to line the bottom of the sleeve with a velvet facing and cut and sewed that to the outer edge of the cuff before finishing the sleeve by trimming the sleeve lining down by about 1.5" (I wanted to keep some extra length in the lining to allow the sleeve lining to fall back down over the seam and provide ease). and then sewing it to the velvet lining.
Last but not least was the hem. I had originally cut the skirt 29" long wich put the coat about mid calf on me. I like this length at the back but it was a little too long at the front so I cut the bottom of the skirt to the length of the zipper in the front tapering out to full length at the back of the skirt. I seem to have a real liking for the curved high low hem at the moment - a lot of my clothes are featuring that.
I bagged the hem of the coat - again cutting about 1" off the length of the lining but turning the hem up 2" so that there is ease for the lining to fall back down over the hem seam.
And I was done.......but not quite.....since I had chosen to do no topstitching a lot of the linings were peaking out and none of the seams would hold a nice crease in this fabric so I settled myself in front of the TV with a needle and tread and pick stitched along all the relevant seams from both sides so that none of the stitches were visible but everything was held in place.
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| Can you see any stitches - Nope neither can I - but they are there! |
It took quite some time. I did along the zipper on both sides, along the edge of the facing, along the neckline, the main seam around the front of the hood plus the seam at the top of the hood, the edge of the sleeves and the facing of the sleeves and finally the bottom hem.
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| Can you see any stitches - Nope neither can I - but they are there! |
It was well worth the time and effort though - the stitches all disappeared nicely and everything is now held securely in place.
So what do I think of my final coat I love it - absolutely love it. It was 20F when I took there photos and apart from my fingers I was toasty warm so it works as it's supposed to. Form, Function and Comfort - What more could a girl want?
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