Coat Making |

Now that the weather is finally getting warmer, I thought what a good time to share my new Winter coat I made back in February!

I knew I wanted to make a new coat this year as my beloved Honetone coat was really starting to wear out. It was made from pretty cheap fabric from one of the Sew Brum meet ups and there were a couple of things that I didn’t love about it in the end (apart from literal holes in the fabric), like a lack of a full collar – it had lapels but no collar. And the lapels never sat quite right but I’ve learnt more about how to make this happen that I knew then so I was hopeful I could do a good job this time, and get a nice finish!

Also using 100% wool fabric helps with pressing – synthetics do not press as nicely in my experience. The fabric – the wool and the lining – were from Fabric Godmother. I have never been disappointed with the quality of their fabric and since this was a sizeable investment in time, as well as money, I didn’t want to cut any corners.

I used the Bella Loves Patterns Traveller Coat pattern as it had the masculine details and vibe I was looking for in my new coat. It was soooo many pages so I went the extra mile and got it printed at Netprinter (which I think I saw was now closing?!). There are 2 heights for the pattern and since I’m 5’3″ I made the one drafted for exactly my height! I made the size 8 with no fitting changes – since it has a dropped shoulder, I thought that would remove the main place it might look wrong if it didn’t fit properly. Obviously this was a risk since the fabric was expensive and I didn’t want to mess it up.

The pattern calls for a lot of interfacing and I just went for the iron-on style for ease of use and ease of getting hold of it. To help the lapels lay back nicely, I ironed on the interfacing with the lapels in the position they sit in when worn – it was a bit of a head-scratcher to figure out which way that was! I saw this in a Bernadette Banner video from an expert tailor – they talked about holding the fabric in the way you want it to lay when you do pad stitching to attach the interfacing.

Sewing the whole coat from start to finish did take a good while – which was what I wanted to do. This isn’t a quick sew! I started it in January (when I finally got the guts to cut into the fabric) and finished it in February, during a week I had off from work to use up my annual leave. It was nice to spend a good chunk of time working through all the steps.

The pattern calls for quite a bit of top-stitching which helped the fabric to sit flat, since it was quite bulky and spongy in places without it.

I decided to go for a bright yellow contrast lining – because why not! I actually quite enjoy the flash of yellow in the vent as I walk. Speaking of the vent, that was the part of the pattern that was the trickiest for me to understand – I think I was overthinking it. When I actually started to do the steps, it finally started to make sense!

I’m not going to lie, I’m really proud of my coat. I’m glad I invested in good quality fabric and took the time to do everything carefully and I hope it will last me a good few years. I have a bit of each of the fabrics left so hopefully I can do some repairs in the future if I need to. I also feel really cool wearing it. Although I love the warm weather we’re finally getting, I’m also a bit sad that I won’t be able to wear it for a while until it gets cold.

Here are a couple of close-ups of the details on the shoulders and the belt. I really love the epaulettes(?) on the shoulders – I like the little loops they sit through, the buttons, everything!

What’s the most involved garment you’ve ever made? Sometimes it’s nice to take extra time to make something really well finished I think. Obviously quick makes are fun, but slow ones are fun in a different way.

You guys I made a coat! Fair warning there will be a lot of photos in this post because, to be honest, I@m really proud of making a coat – and of the fact that I took my time and made what I hope will be a coat that lasts me for years to come.

I think I mentioned in my planning post for February that the wool I used was from Barry’s in Birmingham at the Sew Brum meet-up. I was very good that day – I intended to buy coat fabric and did! It was a small miracle!

I decided I wanted this coat to be super warm and was therefore thrilled when I saw this weird fleecy fabric on sale as a remnant in my local sewing shop.

It was a bargain and I was pretty sure there would be enough to cut out the main pieces of the coat – I didn’t need to be able to do the facing or all of the pocket pieces.

I didn’t take a photo of the lining fabric before I cut it out but it was this bright blue silky satin type lining from Abakhan. It was really difficult to find a fabric that was suitable as a lining in the right shade of blue that I wanted – I wanted to pick out the blue colour from the wool. I ordered some cupro that looked like it was the right kind of colour but when it arrived it was a much more dull shade of blue so looked bad (though I’m sure I’ll find some use for it in another project). At the same time as I ordered the lining, I ordered heavy-duty iron on interfacing (as I only had medium weight in my stash) and some sew-in canvas. I really wish I’d read all of the supplies needed, though as I discovered I also needed stabilising tape (when I had reached a stage of construction which meant I couldn’t progress without it!).

After cutting out all the pieces – in some cases in multiple fabrics and interfacing – I hand basted the wool pieces to the fleecy underlining layers so I could then treat them as one piece of fabric when it came to constructing the coat. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would, to be honest!

I also made sure to mark all of the markings with tailor’s tacks as I knew chalk or anything similar would rub off and so I would lose all those helpful markings. Again it didn’t take as long as I thought to do tailor’s tacks – and it meant my buttons and button holes lined up straight away! I remember seeing Ann on the first series of the Sewing Bee and thinking ‘wow, that looks like a lot of work’ when she was making a jacket and doing tailor’s tacks, but actually they don’t take that long and as long as you don’t accidentally pull them out, they’re a great way to mark fabric that might not take to chalk very well.

I shared the next 2 photos on Instagram but one of the things that drew me to the Honetone Coat pattern (by Marilla Walker) was the pockets. I particularly like the higher up pockets, which are perfect for putting your hands in when it’s cold. (Sorry for the slightly awful photos, they don’t come out well when it’s dark in my sewing space.

The pocket at the bottom came out a little wonky, though I think it looks worse in the picture that in real life. I did construct the big, patch pockets slightly differently from the instruction as with my extra layer of interlining, folding in the edges of the wool would have make the edge of the pocket too bulky I thought, so I stitched the lining to the pocket right sides together, leaving a gap and then turning it right side out, topstitching the hole closed as I stitched the pocket onto the coat. I sort of tried to match the black stripes in the fabric through all of the pockets, and it’s a miracle that worked as well as it did as I didn’t think about it when cutting out!

This is the hair canvas, which you tailors baste on to the inside of the coat, around the back of the neck and on both shoulder fronts. I had seen this technique and the hair canvas inside my dad’s jacket which I refashioned into a jacket for me – though the canvas had started to disintegrate so wasn’t really re-usable. But I enjoyed using this technique and material, having not done any proper tailoring before. I’m really glad I had the interlining layer, though, as I don’t know how I would have stitched it on to just the wool without the stiches showing through to the right side – that still happened a couple of times and I had a whole layer in between!

And here is the stabilising tape which I forgot about! The shoulder seams and back neckline are stabilised (and strengthened), as is the line where the facing folds back to form the lapel – this is a super helpful detail when pressing the lapels!

Those are all the in-progress photos I took, so now onto the endless photos of the finished coat 😀

I made the size 2 and didn’t make any adjustments to the fit. There is a lot of ease built into the pattern so I chose the size based on my bust measurement – if I had chosen by my waist/hips then I would have one up a size, which I might do if I make this pattern again (probably in the jacket version).

I really like the shape of the Honetone from the back – I love how it’s cocoon-y.

One major advantage of this pattern is the dropped sleeve, which means you don’t have to try to set in a sleeve, which would definitely be tricky in this wool with the fleece underlining.

I did manage to get one or two photos of the bright blue lining. I wanted a plain lining because of the slight pattern in the wool – I didn’t want 2 patterns that might clash. The lining fabric is the slipperiest fabric I’ve ever sewn with and it was probably the hardest thing about making the coat – my cutting out was so inaccurate to begin with that I was then flighting a losing battle. I think using pattern weights and a rotary cutter would have helped and I think there are things like starch sprays or something to make slippery farbrics more stable while you sew them.

I definitely learnt quite a few new things making this coat, including bound buttonholes. There are loads of tutorials on Youtube for how to make them and I practiced several times before doing it for real – it’s pretty scary when you cut the hole and know you can’t go back if things go wrong!

Here’s a close-up of the hand pocket, which involves cutting a hole in the coat front, then the pocket itself is slotted in at the back. That was even scarier than cutting a slit for a buttonhole – cutting a huge square out of the coat fronts, when you don’t have enough fabric to recut them if things go wrong, is terrifying!

I really can’t believe these vintage buttons, which I picked up at a local antiques market. They’ve been in my stash for quite a while, waiting for the perfect project, and I couldn’t believe how well the bright blue is matched in the wool and the buttons. And I like that they’re quite big, it fits with the scale of the coat I think.

Although my face, below, looks a little unimpressed, I really can’t recommend this pattern highly enough for a first proper coat with some tailoring techniques, but without some of the trickier things like set in sleeves or a full collar. The instructions – as with all Marilla Walker’s instructions – are really clear and easy to follow. There wasn’t a single time where I didn’t understand the instructions – the only times I got a little confused was when I didn’t read them properly and assumed what I thought they said instead of what was actually written.

Most of my photos were taken after the crazy snow we had in the UK had melted, but I did try to take some photos in the snow as I thought they would look suitably Wintery to show off my first Winter coat. A couple of them came out okay…….

……but most of them looked like this and made me look like some weird kind of alien with no nose! And this is after I reduced the brightness considerably!

And taking photos when it was actually snowing wasn’t a particularly good idea!

Even on the third photoshoot, though, somehow I still managed to take this photo! You. are. welcome.

I really enjoyed taking my time over a larger project – it took me basically the whole of February, working weekends and some evenings to get it made, in time for the beast from the east! I’ve got some other more involved projects planned for the year, like making jeans and a bag and I’m now tempted to make another coat/jacket. Apart from trousers (and maybe a few more shirts/tops) my wardobe is getting as full as it needs to be, so to still keep sewing without making things for the sake of it, I like the idea of making some more involved projects.