Tag Archives: Coat

A review of 2020

Bonkers Gold Rumana Coat

What’s one thing everyone needs in their wardrobe? Obviously the answer is a gold floor length coat! Sorry not sorry there are loads of photos! This is definitely a #SewFrosting garment!

This is, of course, the By Hand London Rumana Coat pattern. I made the size 10 with no fitting adjustments – I was definitely taking a bit of a risk by not making a toile, but I crossed my fingers it would fit well enough to get away with. And I think it does. For reference I’m 5’3″ so if your’e taller and want the coat to be ankle-length you may need to add some length.

The only thing is maybe the sleeves are a little long, but that’s a relatively minor thing in the grand scheme of a gold floor-length coat!

I’ve done quite a few of the techniques involved in making the Rumana coat before, in make my Honetone coat, my Joe Jacket and my Richmond blazer, but I still found the sewalong so, so useful – so if you’re planning on making a Rumana and you’re feeling intimidated, there’s no need!

The fabric was actually 2 pairs of curtains I picked up from my local antiques centre for £5 per pair. Definitely a bargain! And I’ve already used the original lining from the curtains for a toile for my Dressmaker’s Ball dress. Speaking of which, I was originally going to make this coat to wear to the ball last year but didn’t get around to it. And actually it’s a completely different kind of gold to the sequins on my dress so I’m not sure it would have gone that well anyway. I’m glad I finally got around to making it though…..like a year later!

It doesn’t look like it but I’ve ironed this coat and all the seams so many times! I guess curtain fabric doesn’t really need to press well apart from at the hem?! I steamed it and everything and it still looks quite bouncy on the seams, but there isn’t much I can do about it so *shrug*.

I think I cocked up the vent somehow btw. I ended up with the vent trying to go the wrong way and being somehow twisted so I kind of had to fudge it. I have no idea what I did but maybe be aware of your cutting and construction to see if it looks like the instructions/sewalong.

I found making the pockets particularly satisfying as I hadn’t done that specific kind of pocket before. And who doesn’t love a great big, deep pocket?!

When I first had the idea to make this coat, I wanted a monochrome patterned lining. I don’t know why, I just did! I found this viscose from Abakhan, which sadly they don’t seem to have any more. I definitely should have taken more time cutting out the lining – it’s pretty slippery fabric so my cutting was…..not the most accurate. But it was good enough to just about come together so I’m counting that as a win!

I love how it flows out when I sit down!

I think I might just wear this coat for, like, going to the supermarket! Too much? I’m kind of feeling like I want to wear all my favourite clothes all the time now. Anyone else feel better if you wear something you like and feel great in?

The Refashioners 2018: Miss Fisher Costume

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If you’ve read my blog before you may know how much I love the show Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries in part at least because of the costumes. So when Portia announced this year’s Refashioners theme was ‘inspired by’, I couldn’t resist making a costume from Miss Fisher. I really wanted to make her amazing silk robe, but I didn’t think my embroidery skills would be up to it (I’ve done embroidery twice and both times it’s been a little rudimentary).

(image source)

So having ruled out the robe, I then decided to make her signature trench coat and matching hat. I also made trousers, a blouse and a camisole to go under the coat! Fair warning this is a long post with lots of photos! Feel free to skip to the end to look at the finished look!

Here are the garments I started with (and how much I paid for each one):

Large trench coat

Jersey maxi dress

Polyester petticoat skirt

Polyester blouse – I wanted to get a dress to make the blouse, but couldn’t find anything suitable so I had to settle for this blouse.

TROUSERS

First I dyed the dress navy blue – it was mostly viscose so the normal Dylon hand dye took quite well and it didn’t matter that it was beige.

I then sewed 2 parallel lines from the hem upwards, with the right sides together, to roughly where my crotch was when I held the dress up with the hem on the ground. I then cut between the 2 lines and voila, I had trouser legs! I then tried them on, sewed a better bum curve. I then sewed a large hem channel at the top and threaded some elastic through – I know elasticated waisted trousers are not super accurate for Miss Fisher, but these will become my ‘lounging around the house’ trousers, so at least they’ll get some more wear!

CAMISOLE

Again, I started by dying the skirt – I put it (and the blouse) in the same dye as the dress, knowing that because they were both synthetic that the dye might not take as well, but it didn’t take at all! Luckily Instagram came to my rescue and a couple of people told me about Rit Dyemore Synthetic dye. I ordered this in navy blue (to match the trousers) but this was as dark as it went.

First I cut off the elastic, and saved it in my stash to use on another project in the future. I turned the skirt upside down, so the lace on the hem was at the top. I then pinned and sewed new side seams and trimmed off the extra fabric, to use as the straps. I cut 2 strips 5cm wide, then sewed them with a 1.5cm seam allowance so they ended up 1cm wide.

I then stitched the straps on the back, put the top on and pinned the straps where they needed to sit on the front and stitched them in place.

I made the camisole because often in Miss Fisher you can see through her very thin blouses that she is wearing one underneath – I guess it was also underwear in the 20s – but my blouse was too thick to see it so I didn’t really need it, but you live and learn!

BLOUSE

After dying the blouse and petticoat supposedly navy blue they looked like this:

Then after the synthetic dye – which involved cooking the whole lot for over an hour – it looked like this, which was an improvement, but sadly not the colour I was after. The outfit I was basing it on was black, but I was going for navy but then it was this light grey-ish blue.

I unpicked most of the blouse – which took a while because it was all overlocked! I unpicked the collar and placket, and then sewed a new centre front seam to get rid of the extra fabric from the placket. I then used the scout tee as the basis for the new shape of the back and front, but I made the front a v-neck. I then sewed the sleeves back in, and used the yoke which I’d removed from the back to make a facing, understitching it to try to make it lie on the inside.

This is the blouse I was basing mine on so I decided to make the pattern on the fabric myself, since I didn’t find a garment with the right kind of geometric pattern on. I remembered seeing this blog post on Tilly’s blog by the lovely Zeena Shah so I bought some dylon fabric paint. And I thought an empty spool of thread would be the perfect thing to approximate the circles on the original blouse.

Again, because the fabric was so synthetic, the paint didn’t take as brightly white as it would have if it was a natural fibre, but I think the effect was okay.

I used the 2 halves of the collar as the scarves down the sides of the blouse, and although it’s the wrong colour, I think it looks okay as a copy.

I’m pretty proud of the fact that this tiny pile of scraps is all I had left from the above 3 garments!

HAT

I initially thought I was going to be able to make up a hat by myself, but after doing a bit of research, I discovered someone else had also made the Miss Fisher hat and coat and she used the Sybil pattern by Elsewhen Millinery so I downloaded it and am so glad I did!

(image source)

There is a lot of topstitching on her hat – and that was definitely the part that took the longest! That and working out if I had enough fabric to squeeze the hat pieces onto. I used every scrap I had – the fabric I cut off the hem of the coat, both lining and main fabric, and the big flap from the back of the original coat. Apart from the buttons on the coat, and the elastic in the trousers, the only other new thing I used was interfacing for the hat. All of the main pieces are interfaced and one side of the brim is.

I found my tailor’s ham had an additional use by allowing me to pin the lining to the outer of the hat. The lining overhangs a little, which it’s supposed to.

To stiffen the brim a little – I thought it would be too floppy with nothing, but I didn’t want it to be really stiff – I remembered I had this wire stuff from when I made my Doc Brown costume. It was perfect!

I put 2 rows in and sewed another couple of lines of topstitching, each with a 1cm seam allowance. I can definitely recommend this pattern if you want to make a 20s style hat. I did make a change to the shape of the brim and made it a bit wider at the back, though it was still a little narrower at the back than the front.

COAT

The coat was, obviously, the main task for my refashioners project. First I unpicked everything!

I even unpicked the welts from the pockets.

I also unpicked the collar, which it turned out was unneccessary – Miss Fisher’s coat doesn’t have a collar stand, but I thought I would have to resize the original collar since I had resized the rest of the coat so much, but weirdly the collar fitted in its original size!

Miss Fisher’s coat has big patch pockets, so I placed some fabric behind the holes from the welt pockets to try to repair the holes – knowing the holes themselves would be covered with the patch pockets.

This is what it looked like from the front when I’d finished the repair.

I then made new pockets from a piece of the coat which I no longer needed – I can’t remember what it originally was, though.

I used the original welt from the pockets as the flap on the top of the new pockets – handy!

The adjustments I made to the body of the coat were:

resewed the back seam, removing the excess fabric from the original vent, with an extra 2cm taken out.
Stitched the raglan sleeves back in, with an extra 2cm seam allowance at the front and the back.
Stitched the underarm and side seam, as one, with an extra 2cm seam allowance, then stitched again with another extra 2.5cm.
I did all of this with the lining too, though it had set-in sleeves instead of raglan sleeves.
I cut 7cm off each of the coat fronts and off the facings, and then stitched the facings back on. I ended up cutting off all the original button holes, which was handy!
I then reattached the collar.
I then sewed the lining back in, fudging it where it didn’t quite fit any more – It miraculously did fit quite well, it was just at the front where I had changed it from double breasted to single breasted, where it needed some tweaking.
I cut 23cm off the length of the coat, off the shell and the lining, then bagged it out.
I cut 8cm off the sleeves and used the great Grainline method for attaching sleeve linings and shells.
I also used the original shoulder tabs as the tabs on the cuffs of the sleeves.

The final things was to make new button holes and sew on the new buttons, which I got from my local sewing shop.

This is all I had left from the coat and hat refashion. There is a bit more than I thought, but it’s mostly thin strips which I shaved off each seam, and some bits left over from the larger pieces after cutting out the hat. Not bad, though, I don’t think!

Phew! If you’ve read all of that, you deserve a medal. If you’ve skipped ahead to just look at the photos, I don’t blame you!

I took the blouse off so you could see the camisole underneath, but it looks so, so wrinkled – sorry! It was actually sticking to me, it’s so synthetic, so it may not be a top that gets much wear when it’s hot, but it would be good for layering when it’s a bit chilly.

I especially like the back view – it’s a distinctive silhouette and I think I look quite like her! (Obviously when you can see my face, the illusion is less complete!)

I couldn’t not have an outtake from all the ‘walking towards the camera’ shots. You. Are. Welcome!

I really didn’t mean to be posting this so close to the deadline, but I’m not surprised! Everything always takes me longer than I think it will.

Did you do a refashioners project?

My Honetone Coat

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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.

My first finished Vintage Pledge – 1960s Coat and Dress

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I’m excited to share my first finished Vintage Pledge outfit with you today! I made a dress and coat combo for my niece and nephew’s Christening last weekend.

Ta da!

I made it with this pattern which I borrowed from my Grandma.

I liked the idea of the dress and coat being made from exactly the same fabric, like the blue combo pattern illustration, but I had some green and white stripey fabric left over from my wedding Elisalex and a bunch of green cotton drill in my stash and decided to stash bust instead of ordering new fabric – I would have needed about 6 metres for both the dress and the coat and I’m a bit poor at the moment!

This was my first time sewing with an unprinted pattern and it was definitely confusing until I realised the pieces are numbered with numbers punched in holes. I laid out all the pattern pieces on my floor and it looked like this (this wasn’t all of the pieces!):

There were LOADS of pattern pieces! This is because there was the dress, the coat and the coat lining, which needs totally different pieces than the coat shell. Since making my Spring for Cotton dress from another of my Grandma’s patterns I was on the lookout for her having shortened the pattern pieces. This was fairly obvious – she had cut about 4 inches off the coat pieces (but not the dress, so she must not have made the dress) – I know it was 4 inches because one of the offcuts was in the envelope. It was also obvious she had shortened it because she cut off the piece numbers! Luckily there was a guide on the instructions, so I could work out which piece was which. I added 2 inches back onto the length at the cutting out stage (but then later shortened the dress and coat!).

The pattern was really (at least) a size too big – it’s a 34 bust but I’m a 32. Most of the rest of the women in my family have large boobs, but not me! I thought it would be fine as it’s not a super tight/ fitted style. I think if I made it again – I still like the idea of a totally matching coat and dress – I would take the dress in a little across the chest/under the arms and across the back.

Definitely some pooling in my lower back! I would also do something about the shoulders as I feel a little like an American footballer!

The dress is made from some green (obvs!) cotton drill I’d had in my stash for a couple of years. It was maybe a bit stiff for the dress, but it turned out okay. The only problem I had was getting the neckline to sit nicely – it looks fine off and when I ironed it, but then when I put it on it puckers slightly in a couple of places.

Before I put the zip in (a black invisible one I had in my stash – this was definitely a stash-busting make!) I tried it on and it looked rather like a hospital gown! I think it was the scrubs shade of green and the shape without the back seam sewn/ zipped up that made it look particularly bad!

The dress has a couple of tiny pockets in the centre front seams, which are cute but really too small to put anything in – they’re definitely too small for a phone, but I guess the pattern was designed before mobile phones!

The sleeves have facings instead of hems, which I catch stitched in place.

The dress had not been shortened by my Grandma, and I had to take 16cm off the hem in total – 13cm + 1.5cm twice seam allowance, which I catch-stitched in place.

Now onto the coat, which I seem not to have taken many photos of, sorry!

It was a really well drafted pattern, everything lined up perfectly, which was rather pleasing. I was very careful when cutting it out as I juuust had enough fabric, so maybe that contributed too? If you’ve made up a vintage pattern, have you found the drafting is particularly good?

The thing I found less good about this vintage pattern was the sparse (to say the least!) instructions. I’ve read this before so I think this is common for vintage patterns, as sewers at the time did know how to do stuff without needing to be told in the instructions. Thank god I’d done welt pockets before, on my Freemantle coat refashion, or I would have been very confused!

The major thing I learned was that I should have traced off all the markings when I cut out the coat, but I didn’t really know which markings I needed – the pattern had holes to mark the stitching line, as well as darts and marks for the pocket placement. If I’d traced them all, I probably still wouldn’t have know which ones I needed! So I kept the pattern next to me and got out the pieces as I needed to find markings. If I make this again, I will know which markings to trace! There is a key on the instructions for which sequence of holes means which thing, but until I was faced with the fabric, it didn’t make a lot of sense to me I’m afraid.

The coat should have had buttons (and a collar), but I decided I quite like the streamlined look of it without. It does mean it maybe looks a little big. Maybe I’ll add buttons now I’m not sewing to a deadline. I’m hoping this will still be a wearable coat on warm Spring days.

I like the swingy shape of the back (though I should have ironed it before I took these pictures!). It does look too wide for me across the shoulders and shoulder blades – this might be because it’s meant to overlap at the front when it’s done up. Or it might be the same issue I have with the dress, i.e. it’s a size (or two) too big.

I was going to hand stitch the lining in place as the instructions said, but I used Grainline’s tutorial for bagging out a lining (again) instead and did it by machine. Next time I sew a vintage pattern, I’m going to construct it as the instructions say, to make it more authentic.

Because the coat was a bit big, and definitely too long, despite the fact that I had already shortened it by 2 inches (from adding 2 inches back on from the 4 inches my Grandma had already cut off). It looked like it was waaay too big for me and not mean to be that shape. I decided to shorten the sleeves as well as the length, to make it look a bit more flattering. I measured to take off 13.5cm from the sleeves – 12cm + 1.5cm seam allowance. I trimmed them and then stitched them on my machine. I had to take 21cm off the length of the coat – this also made it the same length as the dress, which was pleasing. I cut 12cm off the lining at the hem and 13.5 cm off the shell – the shell was longer than the lining to allow for the facing at the bottom, and I left 6cm extra on the shell to allow for a 3cm fold up. The 6cm plus 1.5cm seam allowance plus the 13.5cm is the 21cm total I had to take off, of that makes sense!

Although I had to do a bit of maths to figure out the hem attaching the lining to the coat, once I’d worked out which pattern pieces were which, this was actually not too difficult a sew. Probably because I just sewed it straight out of the envelope and didn’t make any changes – I feel like fitting is the most fiddly and difficult part of sewing sometimes. I’m definitely less scared to tackle other vintage patterns, including unmarked ones, to complete my Vintage Pledge. I might make a muslin next time, though, to get the fit better! Have you made anything from a vintage pattern? How did you find the sparse instructions?