One coin at a time.
I have been reading and enjoying Gretchen Rubin's book, Better than Before, and invoked her One Coin strategy to get this coat started/finished.
By one coin, she talks about how a single action, e.g. putting a coin in a jar, can add up to a great amount over time. One seam at a time, each of my tiny actions added up to making a whole coat.
I made myself contribute one coin / process per day. Cutting out the pattern, making a toile, cutting out the pieces, adding underlining to each piece, joining the yoke to the front, joining the side seams, even cutting out a pocket bag, a coin was contributed every day.
At the end of many months (or years!) I had contributed enough coins that I had a full coat. Albeit a very loud and attention seeking coat!
By years, I mean that I have had the fabric since 2013, and have been musing over it and hoarding ever since. More here, where I posted the Peony dress I made with the rest of the fabric. A loud floral in a traditional Macintosh appealed to me most. I am experienced enough in the vagaries of the British weather to know that Spring is maddeningly cold, for many months. The daylight hours are long, the gardens are blooming, we want to wear summer apparel, but the temperatures are low. The short answer is to have winter clothing in light colour fabrics. This goes doubly so for any Spring events where you are going to be outdoors. Your coat will be the part of your outfit that people will see. Think weddings, garden parties, racing, etc. (As a side note, the women of Royal Family do this all the time.) So a dressy Spring coat it was to be.
I considered Burda 6921, a full skirted coat, but with such a loud fabric, I thought a traditional mac style would work better. I had grabbed Vogue's V8884 in a $5 pattern sale at Spotlight, literally as I was on my way to the checkout. Sadly for me, I should have been more careful, when I came to cut out the pieces, I realised I had grabbed the wrong size! I am so used to multi-size patterns, that I hadn't even checked. This one is sizes 14-22. That was my first mental hurdle: how to adjust the sizing. I started this project in March, hoping to have a Spring coat ready by this spring. I decided to cut the smallest size, the 14, and adjust from there. Luckily my lovely mother was visiting in April and advised me that pattern adjustments should be made from the centre line. Revelation! Thanks Mum! I accordingly pinched out 1cm down the centre line of each pattern piece, as well as my usual 1 inch short waist adjustment. I left the sleeves as is, knowing I was going to make a toile from the planned underlining.
I sacrificed a lovely pink flannelette cotton from my stash for the underlining. I has this earmarked for pyjamas, and am definitely planning on getting some more for this purpose. But it is also perfect for getting some warmth into what is quite a lightweight upholstery fabric. I also used it for making a toile of my fitting changes to the pattern. A coat of pink flannelette is quite hilarious to behold, but sadly, I didn't get a picture. What I did get was a clear idea of how to adjust the sleeve to get it to fit. 5mm off each sleeve seam, with a corresponding difference in the two yoke seams that feed into the armscye.
I then unpicked my toile and used the pieces to cut out the main fabric. That was also really helpful because I could cut out flat, paying attention to pattern placement and saving on fabric at the same time. Then I got held up, procrastinating about making bunting for the school fair. I put everything aside, procrastinated for a while, and then got on with my allocated 100m of bunting from used school uniforms.
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| This is what 300m of bunting looks like. |
Every single day, I made myself contribute one coin to the process. Even if I was just pinning a seam, it counted. In truth, once I started, I could usually pin and sew a seam. I am clearly a marathoner, not a sprinter (Gretchen again), when it comes to sewing. By the time I went on holiday in July, the outer fabric was finished and one sleeve set in. When we got back, in August, I quickly added the second sleeve, and made the lining. Once it starts to come together, I am much more motivated to contribute more than one coin at a time.
I really like the false storm flap in this pattern. It is made by sewing the yoke with an extra tuck underneath and then top stitching it in place. This creates the look, without the actual storm flap. Let's face it, I am not actually going to wear this coat as a keeping dry layer. On the minus side, I think the collar is too large, and swamps me a bit. I might make a narrower collar another time. I didn't bother with pattern matching. The repeat is so enormous that I would have needed about 5m of fabric to match. I actually used 2m.
I made a sleeveless Peony dress from the remaining 1m in July, and some birthday present sewing in August. I finished up all the hemming and hand sewing of the lining hem to the coat hem in early September. I will absolutely wear the coat and the dress together for a dressy occasion!
The lining was from the Village Haberdashery, a lovely purply silver grabbed on impulse. I didn't have quite enough so the sleeves are lined with ivory which my mother in law gifted me from her stash. You don't notice the different colours because the double breasted front creates a very roomy interior. The pattern instructions are a bit sketchy when it comes to the lining. They don't instruct when to remove the basting stitches from the centre pleat. But I do like the couture finish of slip stitching the lining to the hem, rather than a bagged lining. Vogue missed a huge trick in their drafting: there is no hanging loop on the inside of the collar. This would have been so easy to add, but I didn't think about it until the first time I went to hang the coat on the back of a toilet door!
After the lining and hemming, I only had to work on the closures. This part is a love song to living in London. I went out and about in our wonderful city and made the most of the specialty shops and resources that we have. I took the coat to The Button Queen in Marylebone to find the 10 buttons it needed. I wasn't planning on these deep pink ones, but they were the right mix of blending in but not completely that I was looking for. I got the same buttons for the inside fastening as the outside, because I wanted the buttonholes in the lapels to match exactly.
To get my buttonholes as perfect as possible, I outsourced them to DM Buttons in Soho. Leaving my coat there was like dropping off one of my children with a stranger! Would it be ok? Would they mix it up and give me back the wrong child? DM Buttons is a fascinating place. It is in a grubby service lane off a side street in Soho, which is... eclectic, to say the least. The business is one room with a whole lot of industrial machines. Of which does what, I have no idea, but I think I saw one for putting in studs or eyelets. I chose a keyhole buttonhole and left my baby in their care. There is no way I could have put in keyhole buttonholes at home, nor could my machine have sewed through the 8-10 layers of fabric (underlining, facing, underlining, seam allowances, with underlining) that needed buttonholing. Not to mention cutting them open!
I collected my coat 2 days later, buttonholes done; sewed the buttons on, dashed outside for photos and 7 months after I started, my coat is finished!
Costs
Main fabric: £18
Underlining fabric: £15
Lining fabric: £4.50
Pattern: £3
Thread: £1
Buttons: £9
Buttonholes: £4.50
Total: £55
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