My husband and I are pretty much exact opposites when it comes to photographs. I like still, very non-moving and exacting perspectives and can spend hours fiddling with the camera controls. He often just sets things to auto at all times of day and thinks mostly about composition. He’s kind enough to remember that I want photos that give at least some level perspective of the physical plane because hey, this is also a sewing blog and I want the zipper in focus and folks like details. And I need at least a few where I’m not vortexing into that graffiti.

But I’m definitely not complaining. Derek is enthusiastic about most of what I make and wear and likes making art out of it. It took us a few days to figure out which setting would be best and on top of that we’ve been traveling (which meant that I was totally sewing my coat until the 11th hour before getting on a plane).

We finally found a fun location earlier this week and the sun was kind enough to be lingering behind some light cloud cover. Still, black is hard to get. And the wind was nuts!

The beautiful hair knot I’d managed kept tumbling down left and right and so I just gave up on the hair. I am in desperate need of a haircut anyway. (If pictures could speak, you’d be hearing me saying “my bangs are driving me nuts!” over and over.)

No matter the weather difficulties or the hair anxieties, he encourages me to come out of my shell and show my face to the camera.

But yes! Le coat is done. And it feels good. And I adore it! I’ve already worn it four times because the weather got cold enough. It’s a great feeling to want to wear this and not to abandon it out of sheer boredom from familiarity. I’m still feeling a bit sad that my Lady Grey and white silk blazer, two other labored jacket projects from the last year or so, aren’t getting the wear they deserve. In defense, the Lady Grey was an experiment and I still haven’t figured out how to make its silhouette work with the rest of my clothes.

Speaking of which, although I feared the cocoon silhouette might be a bit much, it works amazingly with some of my basic every day clothes. I tried a few different outfits underneath and most of what worked were shapes that stuck toward the streamlined and narrow, especially from the hem down. If it was a top and jeans they had to be narrow and the top hitting somewhere near my hips. A dress with lots of pleats and drapes looked overdone, but another one with stripes and a columnar look was perfect.

View from the back:

If you’ve been following along my coat process, you might remember I planned to shorten the sleeves, which I did by about an inch and a half. On the muslin they were just a smidge above the wrist but I think it’s better at this “hip” length. I’d also originally intended to use leather strips down the each side of the front zipper. This proved to be more than I wanted to do. It took some careful sewing to enclose the zipper in the leather facings and I didn’t want to push my luck by adding one more leather seam. Anyway, I kinda like that the front closure is just a hint of gold teeth shining through. Simple.

The coat is fully lined in a stretch polyester lining that actually ended up giving it some needed weight and structure, so in the end it’s quite warm and not as drapey as I thought it’d be. I think I’m getting the hang of this lining thing. After learning to draft one for Sherry’s RTW Sew-along, I went back over my notes and adapted it for raglan sleeves.

This was such a fun project to throw myself into and I’m so glad y’all have followed along! (Here’s a link to all my previous entries about the coat, if you’re interested.) The leather adventures may not be over, either. I’ve got some ideas for all those leftover scraps but that is for another day!

This was the week to get my coat done. I had lots of extra time for sewing and then a little-turned-big winter cold decided to take over. People, it was 90 degrees here yesterday. Having a fever in this kind of weather in February is so disorienting. But with a little seam here, a seam there the coat is slowly but surely coming together. The lining is done and the rest of the coat getting close.

Each new material brings a different challenge and learning how to “feel” it as it sews. Last year I worked so much with silk and similarly drape-like rayon that I abandoned pins altogether. I got used to the feel of it in my hands, under the machine, how it feeds, how to control ease and sew around curves. Gaining this kind of tactile knowledge, of both machine and material, is a real pleasure. I love letting fabric intuitively do what it wants to do.

I don’t have much experience quilting but it must be like this experience of this persian lamb fabric. It’s so lofty and cushy and the layers slide around on each other. Just sewing two layers about five inches long results in the top layer creeping a half inch longer. I pulled out my machine’s walking foot but there was still a lot of creepage. In the end I basted all the fur seams before sewing and still used the walking foot for control.

Back when I was sewing clothes in college I’d use like 50 pins just to put in a sleeve and elsewhere did a lot of basting–and still get mightily frustrated when things didn’t line up. Maybe sometimes the pattern was at fault (I wouldn’t have known anything about walking patterns or even thought that patterns could have problems). But I didn’t know much about material handling either, like how to use the feed dogs to ease bottom layers. It was more like trust the pins over trusting or getting to know the fabric.

One interesting tip I picked up from Fehr Trade was to sew fur seams down the nap. Which means sewing all seams from top to bottom. So when sewing the sleeves, rather than going around the entire circle in one pass, or going from the underarm up as some often do in setting sleeves, I sewed each side from the top down.

I wasn’t quite sure how to go about the bust darts. They seemed a little bulky after sewing them shut, so I tried clipping one of them open. This made a bit of a fur mess so I slipstitched the dart together and then tacked it down to the fabric. I left the other one unclipped since it didn’t seem to make much difference from the outside.

For some reinforcement, I used a bit of fusible tape around the armholes and areas where the pockets and zippers would be. I practiced on scrap to make sure it wouldn’t crush the pile.

For larger areas like the hem and front facing I basted in some woven interfacing.

i’ve got a few more pictures of the leather sewing but I’ll save that for later. Now back to my queue of b-list netflix movies and shlepping around in the bathrobe…