Now that I’ve finished all my other spring projects (the Colette dress is coming, sorry for the delay!), I can now devote all my available energy toward making my spring coat, Patrones #261-17, as voted on by all of lovely you!
Also sewing along with me are Zoe (whom I borrowed and traced the pattern from originally!) and Houkje, who’s also tracing and joining in a bit later on, creating our own London-Patrones micro-Sewalong!
First off, Zoe says:
I took a quick photo this morning of the fabric I’m using for the coat.
The wool on the left is a remnant from the cloth house and not enough for the whole coat. The velvet on the right is for the hood, button tabs and possibly the collar if I don’t have enough of the wool for that. I bought some great brass toggles on Walthamstow market (couldn’t find them a 6am without waking the family up), but forgot about the tabs
on the sleeves so I need to get back soon to get some more. I’m looking for a two tone lining in beige and turquoise to match the stripes in the wool, but no joy so far. Need to find time to get over to Shepherd’s bush I think.
Whereas for my coat, I’ll be using that great, soft teal basketweave wool, bulk fusing it with lightweight interfacing, before cutting, then overlocking all the cut edges to prevent fraying and unravelling.
I’ve got 4 yards of the wool, but only ordered 3 metres of the Vilene H180 lightweight interfacing. Only I forget it was super narrow, so by the time I laid it side by side on the wool, I only had about 1.5m of the wool covered. So I’m waiting to see if I can lay out all the pattern pieces that wouldn’t normally be interfaced onto the bulk fused section, and the pieces like the collar, facings and button tabs onto a section that I’ll cover with heavier interfacing to avoid having to buy more. Confused? Don’t worry, this plan might fail anyway…
Moving on, I’ve so far bulk fused what I’ve got, and even that took a marathon pressing section, making my arms ache from putting all the pressure on it. I’m very happy I thought ahead and hoovered (what remains of) the hotel corridor so my wool didn’t get covered in sawdust, cat hair, and fluff when it dragged on the floor.
But then Bosco, never overlooking a good fort when one presents itself, had other plans:
At least it was pretty easy to tell when it had fused properly, as the weave really came up through the interfacing from all the pressure:
And here it is, stacked and ready to use:
The next steps for me are to:
Cut and sew a muslin- Make any fitting alterations to the pattern
- Lay pattern pieces on the fused wool and order more interfacing if necessary
Overlock the edges of all the pieces(wasn’t necessary in the end!)Buy lining fabric and toggles(with Johanna Lu at Goldhawk Road in a few weeks!)Create bound buttonholes on the sleeve and front tabs- Cut and assemble jacket body
- Cut and assemble lining
Winners of Pillowcase Challenge: I ran the entries through the random number generator twice, resulting in #7 and #13 being picked. As I was colouring the comment entries separately in my email program, it was easy to just count down to the winners, which were Bridget and Karen Morrison! Congrats!