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?

Spotty Anna

The last time I made an Anna dress, I had to make a lot of adjustments to the fit to get it right. This time round I learnt my lesson, I used the finished garment measurements instead. To do this I used my Upper bust, bust and waist measurements.

There is usually only about 1-1/2 inch difference between my upper bust and bust, so I've never done a full bust adjustment, choosing to make any adjustments once the dress is made. Maybe if I find a dress that I find has a lot of issues I might do this in future.

However, I have found that it is useful for me to grade from the smaller size at my upper bust for the shoulders/ neckline to the full bust measurement. I did this on the Anna as below:

This means that I get a closer fit above the full bust line. This dress therefore now fits so much better than my previous version (before all the adjustments). It's so comfortable to wear, and I added my favourite skirt on as well New Look 6723 , this is basically just a trapeze shape which I add pleats to once the bodice is made. In order to do this I stitch the skirt sides together, and pin to the bodice (with pleats sewn in) at the side seams.

I then find the centre of the bodice and mark, and the centre of the skirt and mark. Pinning these two centre points together and then up to the point of the pleat like so:

I then create a pleat from this point by folding over the excess fabric to the inside. I then do exactly the same at the back, but instead of folding the fabric under itself, I create a box pleat by bringing the excess fabric from either side of the pleat into the middle.

Using this method, I can ensure that the pleats on the skirt and bodice match up perfectly. Using this skirt instead of the drafted Anna skirt means I can have a big lunch and not worry about the consequences ha ha. Once I got the bodice right on this dress, I managed to make it up in 2 1/2 hours! I've now made two for friends and two for myself, I'm becoming a bit of an Anna obsessive.

I got the inspiration for this dress from a Cath Kidston one I saw that was navy polka dot with ric rac on the bottom, I really liked the style, though it's probably more twee than I would normally go for. I bought the fabric from ebay though and it has already started to fade quite a bit, so I may need to replace it soon. I've found it so easy to wear to work, I think another couple in some 'sensible' fabrics may be on the cards.

It looks like the back is quite gappy in these pictures, and there is a little bit of ease here, but the dress is so comfortable I wouldn't want to make this any smaller. My other version is in a slightly thicker material, so may have needed to be brought in. But I'll tell ya all about that when I post it!

Do you like the shoes? Definitely not sensible, I decided this year was the year of the shoe. They are the perfect way to feel dressed up, and Ive only fallen in them a couple of times! (I always fall over... even in flat shoes, no real reason just that the ground likes me) I think I want to get some more fancy shoes. I figure I dont buy ready to wear very often these days, so I can splurge occasionally.