New Winter Coat

This rather unassuming set of pieces, pinned, wrong sides out, to Twiggy, is the main body of my latest project and took the whole day to cut out.  When completed, and if all goes to plan, it should look reasonably similar to this coat.    I say reasonably similar because this particular coat is made from two different coloured remnants of duffle coat wool.  Neither was large enough to make one entire coat, so I am making a two colour coat which will be shorter than designed, partly because I wanted a shorter coat, partly because I didn't have enough fabric for a longer one. 

I'm not sure whether the fur trim will get added or not.  The Knitting and Stitching Show is coming up in a couple of weeks and last year there was a stall selling really fabulous faux fur in a huge variety of colours.  If there is a fur that will go with the teal/green/turquoise of the coat, I will get some but if not, it will be fur-less. 

Other design changes, most of which were dictated by the fabric, are:

Patch pockets with flaps instead of the designed pockets because the fabric is seriously thick and I didn't think the designed pockets would be successful.  Two layers of the fabric fill the gap between the machine bed and the base of the machine foot when the foot is raised!    Two layers does go through the machine successfully but I'm dreading any areas where seams cross other seams.  I'm not quite sure what will happen there (I only just thought of this issue now... whilst writing this... and have not run any seam tests to investigate this potential difficulty). 

Body, patch pockets, turn back cuffs and all those cute little tabs on the belt and cuffs will be teal/green as shown.  The sleeves, hood, facing, belt and the flap over the patch pocket will be stone colour (pieces not shown).  The pocket flaps will have stone colour tabs to match the flap.

Button holes will possibly cause some readers to suck air through their teeth in horror;  The fabric is so thick I can't do machine, or bound button holes.  My skills with hand worked button holes are minimal... my last attempts looked like ferrets had been chewing them.  My fabric doesn't fray as its a very heavy felted wool.  So, I'm going to cut my button holes open, paint the mouth of the buttonhole with fray check liberally (just to be sure), then trim the button holes front and back with quarter inch grosgrain ribbon folded to form decorative ends.  I think I saw a similar thing in Threads Magazine so will dig it out and see if I've recalled correctly.  I think if I sew the ribbon on very carefully by hand I can sort of catch the button hole edges behind the ribbon to protect the raw edges from the button.  I'll use shank buttons to try to reduce the wear on the button holes also.     I've added an extra button hole in the skirt of the coat also, because its a winter coat, and I want it to close a bit further down than the original design.

I've removed the vent from the center back of the coat.  I didn't feel it was needed in a coat that would finish just above the knee and I wanted the coat design to be as simple as possible given the rather challenging thickness of the wool. 

All the seams will be sewn, pressed open, one seam allowance cut to one eighth, then the longer seam allowance pressed over it, then topstitched and the excess trimmed out.  I've done a few different seam treatments on scraps, and this one makes the seam more windproof and more secure.  I was concerned by the fact that whilst running the seam tests, I was able to just rip my pressed open seams out with just a strong tug on the two pieces and was afraid I'd reach forward in the supermarket and my coat would come apart across the back or something. 

So that's my next project.  Quite a challenge but hopefully I'll prevail.    Next step is to thread trace the key markings then to draft the lining pieces for the coat and cut out the lining.  I'm using a nice stone coloured lining that I found in the stash which will hopefully look OK.   Due to the thickness of the fabric, I'm going to back all the little tabs with the lining to reduce bulk.