Wool Coat 1

I love making outerwear and have supplies for a cool new jacket at some point.

I realized that I actually posted about a wool coat before, but that was a kids’ pattern, so I’m labeling this one as #1.

I had seen a few cool coats on Etsy and decided to make my own. I really wanted asymmetrical buttons. For some reason, which is totally unlike me, I didn’t use a pattern, at least not a paper one. It’s dangerous, and especially so because I didn’t make a draft out of muslin either. However, I did take apart 2 older coats to use as patterns and I knew they fit well.

First of all, the fabric is from Mood (it’s no longer in stock). I actually found the fabric before I decide to make a coat. I had found a pretty boucle fabric and ordered swatches of that and this. The boucle was underwhelming, but the other one was beautiful. I got the lining and buttons from Joann. I don’t remember if I used interfacing or not because I think this was before I knew about that, but the sleeve cuffs are stiff-looking, so maybe I did.

Like I said before, I took apart a couple of well-worn coats and used them as patterns (and made the front asymmetrical).

I made tailored (aka bound) buttonholes (below) because I didn’t know how to do regular ones on the sewing machine, but they are way harder than regular buttonholes. For these tailored ones, you use this crazy metal contraption to shape and sew a square of fabric. The back sides of these look terrible (you can kind of see them in one of the photos) because I didn’t know how to finish the back, and I just kind of cut square holes and there are raw edges that I may or may not have glued (don’t kill me, I was just starting out). It wouldn’t bother me so much if they weren’t visible, but when I wear this I usually fold down the top 2 buttons for comfort, because it goes up pretty high. Therefore you can see the back of 2 buttons. Oh well. It’s not the worst thing in the world.

The sewing wasn’t too much of a problem as a whole. I managed to get everything to meet up pretty well, which is always a huge problem for me. By that I mean that I’m lacking in precision, so sometimes pieces that are supposed to be the same size end up a couple inches different in some way. My other coat that I haven’t posted about was so messed up in that way that I almost couldn’t finish it.

I sewed the lining on entirely by hand using a slip stitch. You’d think it would take forever to do that, but it only took a couple of hours.

Overall I am happy with this coat, although I don’t wear it often (the sleeves are a bit tight and I’m annoyed by the back-of-button thing). It was definitely an easier process than some other things I’ve made.