Purple Raincoat

I did it! Woop! As you can tell I was pretty excited to finish this coat, it is made from a laminated fabric, so it was pretty difficult to manouvre through the machine, but it was totally worth it.

You may remember from my previous post that I made a pattern from an old coat, taking this apart and tracing around the pieces. You can see that here.

A couple of adjustments I made to this pattern were to omit the collar, and replace with a hood. The original coat had a hood attached by buttons underneath the collar. But I never took the hood off, and the collar got in the way of the hood so off it came.

This meant I had to draft the hood as I wanted one that was a little deeper, I hate when the wind picks your hood off your head in the midst of a downpour.

I used a heat activated waterproofing tape to seal the seams, it was a little difficult to get the temperature correct. Some of the tape melted, and some of it didn't attach, but I got there in the end. All I can hope is that it's still ok in there!

The pockets were attached on to the outside, I used the lining piece from New Look 6128. I lined the pocket pieces and then top-stitched them on. I rolled the lining into the centre, so you would see very little of it on the outside.

The seams have been stitched using flat felled seams, this stitches the bulk down on the inside. The triangular pieces at the back and front yoke caused a bit of a headache, but I found that if I snipped off the edge at the point of the triangle, stitched down to the point, and did the same for the other side (rather than leaving the needle in and pivoting) it all went ok.

Oooh shiny green lining. The lining was a little bit complex, I haven't lined a jacket successfully before so I didn't really know what I was doing, but I muddled through. I began by attaching the hood lining to the top of the back facing. I then stitched through the hood to the facing, to secure it in place.

I stitched the sleeve lining pieces to the end of the sleeves right sides together. I then attached the lining to the facings, inside out and stitched the sleeves to the main lining. This meant I had the raw edges of the sleeves showing where I attached it to the main body. I could have had stitched but  was feeling under a bit lazy at the time so I hand stitched bias binding to cover this seam. I then hand stitched the bottom edge of the coat together.

A mistake I made was to put the button holes on the man side of the coat, but you know you win some, you lose some. Feels very odd trying to the close them up on the wrong side though.... as my face shows here.

This definitely counts as a completed challenge, I'm so proud of the coat. It is a spring coat really, I wore it for a week but it was pretty chilly, and a little sweaty in there on a hot bus. Can't wait for the spring! Look here's a dance... do you reckon it will make the spring come early?