Progress on my coat

As of Sunday, all of the pieces of my muslin are cut out. The seams are all thread traced and ready to sew together.

I've had a few minutes here and there the last couple of days and have the back sewn together and am working on the princess seams of the front. I hope by this weekend to have the musling together and fitted.

Lady Grey Coat Sew Along

I'm participating in the Lady Grey Coat Sew Along over at Gertie's blog.
I am so excited! My fabric came yesterday from fabric.com. An unclipped corduroy and one of Amy Butler's prints from her Midwest Modern collection plus ivory satin for the sleeve lining. I think it will be lovely. I am definitely starting on the muslin today when I get home from work!

And now finally, the coat

So, here's Coleen ready for winter. William knit her the tam and the scarf is my family's tartan, which really ties the green coat and red hat together.

Front


and back:

I am quite pleased with it. I had lots of fun with the needle felting on the belt and the pocket welts. I am also pleased with the buttons I found. They have interest without overpowering the other details. - I didn't think about it, but on the back belt the buttons and needle felting are quite close together and a lot of the buttons I looked at clashed with the felting. Thankfully one of the ladies at the quilt shop saw these (I had passed right over them after trying the same design in red and not liking it).




I re-sewed the lining and it looks much better. The sides do not pull up any more.



I really learned alot making this coat and now want to tackle them for William and me. I know there are things that I can improve the next time around and look forward to the challenge.

Coleen's coat...almost

I said I was almost done with Coleen's coat. That all I needed to do was add buttons.
Well, I went to La Crosse on Friday and found buttons I really liked at the local quilt store A Stitch in Time. I realized however when I had Coleen try on the coat to make sure the button placement was right that the hem was unacceptably wonky



So I ripped the lining hem out and realized I either cut it too short or misunderstood the directions and sewed it in wrong because the coat hangs perfectly if I just scoot the lining up about an inch. I had bagged the coat and sewed this in by machine originally, but I am just going to resew it by hand.





This picture, with the really bad shadow shows that the lining came all the way down to the bottom edge of the coat - in fact if you were really looking the lining showed (just barely)- so I am glad that I ended up ripping it out anyhow.

After I ripped it out and pinned it where it hung naturally when she was wearing it, it looked more like this:



Hopefully there will be pics tomorrow with it done and ready to wear!

Coat Muslin

I am making a winter coat for Coleen. The first step was a muslin to make sure I had the right size. I want there to be growing room, but on the other hand I don't want her to be swimming in it. My main quandry, is the length of the sleeves. They are about 3" too long. Can I just hide that in the seam allowance and resew them when they need to be longer or is it better to leave them a little long and cut the seam allowances properly? In the bottom picture she is pointing to where her shoulder actually hits. The shoulders are wide, but overall I don't think it looks gigantic on her. So what do you think?