COAT: so far today

Well, hubby may not enjoy my singleminded coat obsession while the kids turn the house upside down, but I feel like I have made good progress and now I can put it aside and make dinner.

Here are the front right and rear panels. I'm particularly pleased with the rear pleat, which I think will work out nicely when it's all sewn up.

I need to loose a couple of inches from either side of the rear panel (just folded it over in the picture) which I think will be easy enough to do. I just need to position the original panel over the top and trim as appropriate.

Look at that crazy zigzag stitch down the front; silly error. I started slicing into the panel I had already cut out thinking that it was a spare piece. Instead of making a whole new panel I just patched it up. Doh.

Next I need to take off the excess from either side of the rear skirt panel and sew it to the top rear panel (currently it's held in place by loose taking stitches). Then fix an extra piece above the underarm section which seems to have come short given my SBA alteration.

After that I'll attach the front to the back at the shoulders and see if the side panles meet up nicely. Then, I'm not sure if I'll work on the sleeves or the neck. 

If anyone's reading this I'd love some advice / opinion on arms. The original coat had quite deep arm holes and I've thought about making them narrower at the armpit. I hope to add an insulating lining that the original one did not have so perhaps reducing the arm holes too much will make the whole too restrictive.... thinking thinking.

COAT: Cutting new, altered shapes

I have this old curtain fabric which I'm using to make my prototype. I can experiment with the new shapes I want for each panel. I'm still not sure how the new standing collar will work, but I hope I will be able to figure it out. Here I've taken some slack out at the chest and I've extended each panel by several inches.

It's quite sketchy and wobbly looking. I hope it won't be too squiff.

3/12/11 - I've attached the under arm portion to the front panel today and can see clearly that it's now a bit too short to reach the arm hole properly. I'll have to patch it up and make sure the modified shape is used in the final version.

Commence unpicking

Here's where I start to tear apart a serviceable coat. It all fits together so neatly at this point and I'm a bit worried about how I'll put it all back together. It looks like the kind of thing that has to be done in the right order. I wonder what that order is!

The bottom seem looks the best place to start. It's the only place where I can see the seam and must have been the last part sewn.



















Later in the evening:
The kids are in bed, so I'm back to my project. I thought this was worth noting so that I can refer back when I'm putting the prototype together:

Where the outer sleeve cuff joins the lining you can see the seem on the wrong side of both pieces. This must have been the first point of attachment for the sleeves, when both outer and lining pieces were separate from the whole. The next stage, I think is to set the outer sleeve and then to set the lining sleeve. At that point the lining must already be attached at the neck. Does that sound like the right order?

I will need to think about how to achieve the turned cuff on my design...

If you're interested, here's what it looked like prior to dismembering:

COAT

How much for a simple coat? Well it looks straightforward enough, and I've got such a vision of the coat I want that I'm finding it impossible to settle for anything I can see in the shops. I want more, and I want it to fit. So I'm going to make my own damnit!

No I've never made a coat before, but following the success of the superhero suit I made for my son I want to have a go.

So this is what I've got. A 6-ish year old thing that has so completely lost its charms that I am happy to dismember it for my cause. 

If you're wondering what all that crap is hanging off the front, it's me using scraps of old curtains to determine what shape I want the front to be. I've also pinned out pinches along the front panel seams to try to reduce the bagginess so that this off the peg coat will be redeveloped into a pattern for a new, better fitted, one-of-a-kind a-la-Nadia coat. If anyone out there has coat making experience and wants to share some advice I'm all ears. Otherwise I'm going in blind. I'll just hack this thing together and see what the result is.

Here is what I want.... my first sketch of my coat.

And here is my more refined hand drawing of the front. In the rear I want a double pleat to balance the wide front panel. Its first incarnation will be made from old curtain fabric.