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?

Christmas Party Pastille Dress

Crikey, this post has been a long while in the making!

I received the Colette sewing handbook last Christmas from my Grandma. It was an absolutely brilliant pressie as I learnt a lot reading through the pages, but the colour palette in the book, along with some of the rather fitted/ floaty sleeve-ness of the patterns made it a little difficult for me to visualise myself in any of them.

When I was thinking of making a dress for my works' Christmas party I thought it would be a good excuse to give these patterns a try, and the pastille on the front cover caught my eye. I liked the subtle sweetheart neckline (not the bow... too twee for me) and the sleeves which aren't a separate piece, something I hadn't done before. I knew such a fitted straight skirt would not be a good look on me, though I did swap out the skirt for a straight one in for my stars in their eyes dress. However, looking closely at the picture I could see that the skirt was a separate piece from the natural waist, so it would be an easy job attaching a skirt I liked.

I used the digital rose print fabric I picked up at the Birmingham blogger meet-up, and fully lined the bodice.


I decided to make a muslin of the bodice for safety, and found that something strange happened when I calculated the sizes. I had to cut out a size 6-8  shoulder/ bust but a 14 waist? I think I did a calculation wrong as when I tried this on it was all kinds of wrong, I then cut an 8 waist (in fact I trimmed it to a 12, then a 10 and then an 8!)

Even after I had done this the triangle darts did not work on my body (lucky this was a muslin!) I then pinned the darts closer to my body to fit as I wanted, and I ended up with a close fitting bodice, and half moon darts. Has anyone else ever ended up with rounded darts? Is this a thing?

I used the muslin as my lining, and made the following dress. I finally got round to taking pics of it last weekend! That's a whole 8 months ha ha ha.

I put on a bit of weight after Christmas , and the wedding, and holidays... so this dress became a little bit tight. You can still see in the back it could probably do with a teeny bit more ease, but I've lost most of this weight now so I'm not worrying about it.

I took these pics with my shiny new Pentax Q10, which is somewhere between an SLR and a standard digital. Having no knowledge of how to use the SLR (and no real inclination to learn) was infuriating, so Mr. T got my this for my birthday, it feels a lot more manageable. There are still a lot of settings, but I'm not feeling overfaced any more which is good.

I've taken another whole bunch of pics, so expect some more regular viewing for the next few weeks.