![\"Front](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/coat-front.jpg\")
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One of my friends selects a word at the beginning of every year, rather than a resolution. The idea is to apply that word to the things she does throughout the year — words like “play” or “ease.” At the beginning of 2018 I hadn’t been sewing very long, and picked “coat” as my word, hoping that in the coming months I would pick sewing projects that gave me the skills and confidence to make a winter coat. <\/p>\n
I knew from the start I wanted to make a plaid wool coat. And something like this Lisette Pattern<\/a> And I found the fabric (a wool coating) this fall, from Stone Mountain and Daughter<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Lisette coat has princess seams, and while there are lots of examples and blog posts about making the coat, I only found one sewist that made it in other than a solid color. That made me nervous — plaid matching princess seams was maybe beyond my current skills. So I looked for another pattern. I found a couple of candidates, and bought the most promising. But I didn’t like the look after I made a muslin (the sleeves fit very oddly and I had no idea how to fix them). Same went for the second coat pattern (raglan sleeves, not what I wanted). But whoa did I learn a lot from making those muslins and what I was in for. They left me with a lot of questions too. Should I bag the lining? How wide should the hem be? When exactly during the coat construction do I make bound button holes — maybe before attaching the facing? So to boost my confidence a bit, I also watched several Craftsy classes about linings and tailoring. <\/p>\n The third pattern I bought was McCalls 7481<\/a>, to make view C. It’s described as “Lined vest and coat have front snap closing with sleeve and\/or pocket variations. C: Collar and patch pockets.” My plan was to use buttons instead of snaps. I made up a muslin out of a sheet, and liked the way it looked. Then I made these changes<\/p>\n Okay, at this point I knew the pattern did me no favors, and I probably should have kept looking for something else. But it was mid-December by this point, and I blundered along, reasoning that this is my first me-made coat, and I had procrastinated enough.<\/p>\n After I’d sewn the shell and tried it on, I realized I needed something at the shoulder. First I added a sleeve head using this Threads tutorial<\/a>, but that didn’t make it look much better. Threads has a pattern for shoulder pads here<\/a> and I had some quilt batting at home, so I tried making a set. I got to use the 3 step zigzag on my sewing machine — something I hadn’t used before! — but the resulting pads were pretty wimpy, so I ended up getting a pair at Joann.<\/p>\n About my lining. I decided on Sunback lining (satin on one side, flannel on the other) because the wool I’d bought wasn’t really that thick. I got it at B&J Fabric<\/a>. I’m glad I got a thicker lining, because the finished coat isn’t as warm as I’d hoped.<\/p>\n One of the coat patterns I’d considered, but hadn’t muslined, was Vogue 1479<\/a>, an Isaac Mizrahi design with something like 9 pockets (patch, welt, inside, outside…). It seemed more complicated than I was up for as a first coat-making project. But I read all the directions, and was intrigued by the patch pockets — they have 2 separate openings, from the top and from the side. They also had a facing for the top, which the patch pockets on my pattern didn’t. The construction seemed straight-forward, and the top facing seemed like a good idea, so I swapped in the Vogue pockets. <\/p>\n After a lot of head-scratching, I made the welt button holes before folding the facing and attaching the lining. I made 3 practice button holes before attacking the actual coat. Sadly the practice ones are very nice and the ones on the coat are pretty iffy. But they work, and I like the buttons I found.<\/p>\n Bagging the lining. I read several blog posts about bagging (here<\/a> and here<\/a>), and in Linda Lee’s Craftsy class Underneath it All<\/a> she shows how to bag a coat, with the opening at the hem. I decided to use Lee’s method — rather than the bagging opening in the sleeve. I found hand sewing the hem once the coat was right-side-out to be very awkward (Lee’s lining drafting directions has the lining fold over the hem for extra ease), so next time I make a coat I’ll try the opening in the sleeve method.<\/p>\n Here’s the final coat. As I said, it’s not as warm as I hoped, but I’m really pleased with how it turned out. I’ve worn it every day since finishing it at on January 4th. The sleeves are too short — maybe because I added shoulder pads? There’s something wonky happening at the hem where the coat closes… but YEAH, I finished!<\/p>\n One of my friends selects a word at the beginning of every year, rather than a resolution. The idea is to apply that word to the things she does throughout the year — words like “play” or “ease.” At the beginning of 2018 I hadn’t been sewing very long, and picked “coat” as my word, … Continue reading “Adventures in coat making: M7481”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":468,"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Butterick](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/pattern-cover.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/plaid-wool-coating.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n![\"M7481](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/M7481_a-cover.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
Front of the coat<\/p>\n![\"Sunback](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/coat-lining.jpg\")
Sunback lining in very bright fuchsia<\/p>\n![\"Back](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/coat-back.jpg\")
Back of the coat<\/p>\n![\"Pocket](\"http:\/\/dino.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/coat-detail.jpg\")
Pocket detail — opens from either the top or side<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"