BWOF 9-2006-104 (trench coat): Complete

The coat is done!  Though it took a lot of movement from the universe to make this happen, it is finally completed.  

Fabric & Notions

• 3 yards of cotton navy twill (stash; Fabric Mart)
• 3 yards of plaid silk broadcloth (stash; Fabric Mart)
• 1 package of red piping (stash; source unknown)
• fusible interfacing (Mood NYC)
• navy mottled buttons (Wawak)
• navy mottled belt buckle (Mood NYC)
• short piece of twill tape to use for hanging
• bias cut fleece strips for sleeve heads
• muslin for back stay
• 80/12 universal needle (for shell)
• 70/10 microtex needle (for lining)
• regular sewing and serger thread

Size and Pattern Alterations:  I traced and cut a straight size 44 for my muslin.  I compared the pieces to another shoulder princess seamed coat (Indygo Junction 740) and was happy to see that not many changes were needed.  I used 5/8" seam allowances all around.  I sewed 3/4" seams at the start of the shoulder princess seam on both the front and back as a cheater narrow-shoulder adjustment.  Then, I tapered to 5/8" above the bust and 1/2" at the bust for a little extra room.

I did a 1" swayback adjustment by removing the length completely in the waist area and adding the amount to the hem.  This way, the side back seam lengths remained the same.

I took out a 1" wedge below the neckline; the muslin showed a bit of bunching in this area.

I also shortened the sleeves 3 inches (1.5 inches in two places).

I did not add a hem allowance since the "unfinished" length was slightly longer than what I wanted.

Instructions:  My brain was no match for this Burda word salad.  In addition to the instructions being sparse and confusing, you are to jump back and forth to other views for different parts.  Yeah no.  To construct the majority of the coat, I used the instructions for McCall's 5525.   To make the inseam pockets and pocket flaps, I used the ironically less confusing word salad from Burda 8-2009-107. 

Construction:  Sewing the shell was pretty straight forward; it's cotton after all.  The fabric was easy to work with and pressed beautifully.  The lining, on the other hand, was a pain in the ass.  Me and slippery fabrics just don't get along; plus the lining is a plaid.  It's an even plaid, but still.  Even though I pinned carefully and sewed slowly, I only managed to marginally match the plaid.  Using a walking foot made it WORSE! 

I brought this on my self.  =)  I had to have THIS lining with THIS fabric come hell or high water.  Yeah well, it was hell on high water, but I made it work.

Front/Front Facing Problem:  As many suggested and as I suspected, the lengths of the front and front facing were off.  Somehow, the front was 1/4 to 1/2 an inch longer than the facing.  This minute amount caused the massive amount of pulling.  I must have erred in tracing/measuring - despite checking my work twice.  Oh well.  

Kenneth D. King fixed it by taking a deeper hem and trimming the excess.  He also corrected the pattern by creating new stitching lines on both the facing and front.  The fix resulted in the coat being shorter, but it at least it's not pulling wildly like before.  I was ready to send this coat to a watery death in the Detroit River.  

I had the coat professionally pressed by my dry cleaner.   

Other:  I removed the sleeve loops because they were way too close to the hem.  If I make this pattern again, I will move the placement lines up 1.5 to 2 inches so that they're more proportionally positioned.

I added some red piping between the facing and lining because why not?  I did this on my last two coats and really like it.

The one thing I'm bummed about is the wrinkling along the bust curve.  

I picked and restitched this area a couple of times and steam-pressed it over and over.  Of course it's on the side that's not covered by the flap.  o_O  If I had enough fabric, I would have recut the side front panel and sewed it again.  Oh well.

I used navy mottled buttons in two sizes (large for the front and small for the epaulettes and belt loops).  It was surprisingly difficult to find a navy mottled belt buckle.  Thank you Mood!

Conclusion:  I am very happy with coat.  It will serve as a great transition between seasons or whatever we call the days between hot and arctic in Michigan.

As for the pattern, this was my trial run for my super warm tundra-life winter coat.  I don't know if I will use this pattern for that.  Even though Kenneth fixed the length issue, I don't want to run into the same problem again.  Maybe I'll make a muslin of the front with facing just to be sure it works.  I plan to go all-in (pad stitching, hair canvas, interlining) with the coat and want to make sure everything is sound first.

Up next:  Probably another coat or two.  And maybe some more pants.  I still haven't given up on Starting from Scratch.  I'm in turtle mode for a while.

Until next time, peace!

L

Going to Need A LOT of Magic Closet

So.  Much.  Magic.  Closet.  I'm talking Narnia here.

Sigh.

I separated the lining from the facing two inches up from the hem and still cannot get rid of the horrible pulling.  The right side (shown above) is not nearly as bad as the left side.  The lining is no longer attached to the hem and is left to hang loose.

I've made three lined coats and three lined jackets.  I've never seen anything like this before.

It seems as if the front is longer than the front facing.  When I pulled up the front and pinned it, the pulling somewhat disappeared.

I carefully measured every seam line on the front, front facing, and lining and found one discrepancy of 1/2".  Everything else was pretty close with a margin of error of 1/8" - surely not enough to cause this much trouble.  Right?

I didn't use steam when fusing the interfacing, so I don't think shrinkage is the culprit.  Plus, interfacing is fused to both the front and front facing.  If the interfacing is to blame, it seems like both pieces would suffer the same fate.

The coat fabric was pre-washed, dried, and steam pressed prior to cutting the pattern.  My wool jackets were only steam pressed and the other three coats weren't pretreated at all.  This problem is a mystery.

So off to the magic closet it goes.  After some considerable time off from this coat, I'll go back and reattach the facing-lining unit by taking out that excess fabric near the collar.

I momentarily considered removing the lining completely and replacing it with some Ambiance rayon.  But, I'm not comfortable with discarding this lining...yet.  It matches the vision in my head and I can't shake that image.

Oh well.  

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.  I've started working on fall clothes since that seems to be lacking right now.

Until next time, peace!

L

New Look 6053 (skirt): Complete

Sorry for the cruddy selfies.  I took these on my way to work and was in a rush.  I figured I would be too tired to pose for the camera after I came home.  I was sooooo right. 

This is the same skirt that's paired my second and frustratingly puckered version of New Look 6407.  Incidentally, I am working simultaneously on a third and fourth version of this blouse pattern and have wrinkles of another kind.  More on that in another post.

Back to the supposed-to-be pencil skirt.

Fabric/Notions:

• 1.5 yards raw silk tweed (from the stash...woot!)
• 0.75 yards silk or silk-blend something that I used for lining but probably shouldn't have (also from the stash!)
• 7" invisible zipper
• fusible interfacing
• 70/10 microtex needle
• serger and sewing machine

Fit and Alterations:  I made my standard full seat adjustment of 1.25".  I added a wedge beneath the darts and trued the center back seam at the waist.  I removed the extra width gained by truing the CB from the side seam.  Pictures and a step-by-step description of how I make this alteration can be found here.  

I like the way New Look skirts fit and I usually don't need to make any more adjustments.  

Construction & Lining:  Construction was easy since the pattern only has four pieces:  front (cut on fold), back (cut two), and front/back facings.

You read correctly: I added the facings!  I would say that there's a pig flying somewhere, but since that actually happened, I guess I have to stop using that phrase.  O_o

Usually I ditch the facings in favor of supporting the waist with petersham.  I learned this in a Kenneth D. King workshop and haven't looked back.  This time, however, I wanted to the inside of the skirt to look nice and pretty like this:

photo credit:  lladybird

How'd that work out?

Meh it's okay.  I think what I'm looking for is best suited for skirts with a waistband.  This just seems to add more bulk where it's not needed. 

Given that I've made three coats and several jackets, trying to create the lining pieces was a head-scratcher.  I had to think (probably way more than necessary) about how to get the lining and facing to be one piece without exposing the edge of the facing.  Here's what I did:

1.  I folded out the dart and traced the facing edge onto the lining piece.  

2.  I  measured up from the newly-drawn line 1 1/4" (two seam allowances).

3.  After the top piece is removed, I followed the same steps for the other skirt piece.  (I can't remember if I started with the skirt front or skirt back.)

This is the process I followed when creating the lining pieces from scratch when facings are involved.  It seemed to work well on my Indygo Junction coats, so I figured the same idea would work here.

I'm going back to the petersham method.  I'm not skilled enough to make this other way work.  And then there's this:

Bleh!  Not a nice finish and I press as I sew.  All.  The.  Time. 

Wearability Rating (3.5 out of 5):  What I used for the lining was not a good match.  The lining kept getting hung up on my tights, which made the skirt bunch up in weird ways as I walked.  It wasn't uncomfortable, but very annoying.  I think the fabric I used was probably better suited for a blouse or skirt.  If I want to continue wearing this garment, I'll definitely have to replace the lining and facings.

Conclusion:

New Look skirts are solid go-tos for me, so I'll probably make this again.  I was a little disappointed that the skirt wasn't more pencil-like in the end.  I suppose I have to peg the hem a bit to remove some of the flare.  Otherwise, the skirt fits just like my other A-line skirts.

Until next time, peace!