Slow progress

I was quite busy and my head hasn’t been with writing blog posts in the past two weeks. Also not a lot was done to the coat. I intended to take it to my annual 5-day “weekend” with my sewing friends and complete it there, but changed my plans into sewing easy knit dresses for both me and my daughter and a pants sloper. The event was this past weekend and it was such good fun. Lots of sewing and knitting done by all of us, talked about all subjects you talk about between girls and just had a very good time together.

Another thing that is keeping my mind busy is that I might start giving sewing lessons/workshops next year. An opportunity came across and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to do it, what courses to offer etc. It will be something I will do next to my regular work, though it’s been on my mind for a long time to do this and share and meet with creative people. So much to think about….

Back to the coat. I’ve a few pictures to share of the inside of the front.

Floating shoulder piece

The facing not sewn yet, this was just to see how it would be with buttons. I will check other options as I’m not completely fond of the button closure.

Short coat–Lekala 4625 back

It took me some time to find a pattern I wanted and could sew with the fabric I had. As this fabric was bought with the intention of sewing a Chanel style jacket I had only about two meters of fabric. Think it was a remnant piece as there were strange cut offs on both sides, probably for samples.
Having two meters to sew a coat is not much, to say the least. My choice of patterns was very limited and I settled for this Lekala pattern.

I will try to find an accent fabric for the belt/closing and if I can’t find it, I might skip that detail and sew buttonholes. I’m also thinking of adding pockets. A coat without pockets isn’t very good, don’t you think?
After roughly cutting the fabric pieces I block-fused them with a thin fusible interfacing. This I bought at the English couture company in the UK. (I used to buy most of my interfacing at Fashion Sewing supply from Pam Erny, but as they don’t ship internationally anymore I had to find another resource and this is certainly a good one. Great quality too).
The interfacing gives more stability to the fabric and keeps it from ravelling.
From that point I treat the fabric as the base fabric, meaning that I still added interfacing as I would for any jacket or coat that I did not block fuse with thin interfacing first.

A back stay is added. The darts are pressed in the opposite direction from the darts of the main fabric. It could be better to stitch the seams with a catch stitch to keep them down. Something for another evening.

A walking foot is almost a must to keep the lines matching.