Winter Coat - Progress Report Week 4

OK, so I didn't get round to posting this at the weekend as things have been a little hectic round here. In addition to three little people getting more and more excited about Christmas I have the bonus of having builders, plumbers and electricians in and out of the house all day - not massively conducive to getting large amounts of sewing done (particularly with intermittent electrical supply and heating!).

But, despite all this, the winter coat has progressed and, dare I say it, should be completely done, buttons sewn on and all by the end of this week - I am so excited!!

But before I get ahead of my self a little catch up on the construction process. Progress Report Week 3 detailed the interfacing of the front and back sections and then it was on to the sleeves. Again, reports seemed to vary as to how much (or how little) interfacing should be applied to the sleeves - some people seem to interface the entire sleeve but more common was some interfacing of the lower sleeve which is the part that gets the most wear. Hmmmm, this is all very well but when your sleeve pattern is made up of a front sleeve pattern piece and a back sleeve pattern piece it is not easy to isolate the 'lower' sleeve! I started therefore by interfacing the lower halves of both of the sleeve pieces with canvas hair. I daigonally basted the canvas hair to the interlining, as for the front pieces but didn't extend the canvas hair into the seam allowances so as not to add any bulk. Once I had done this I basted the sleeve pieces together to see if it looked ok - as I was worried that the top part of the sleeve would then look a bit saggy. (I should have taken a photo at this stage to show you but I'm afraid I forgot - the amount of handstitching in this coat was bound to addle my brain at some stage!)

Although it had added a step to baste the sleeve sections together to see how it looked I was glad I had done it as only interfacing the lower section of the sleeve did cause the top section to sort of fall into the arm, if you get my gist. This could probably have been rectified by using more flexible interfacing for the lower sleeve but instead I decided to interface the top section of the sleeve as well with the canvas hair.

As for the front coat sections I cut the interfacing out of the hem allowance and used some more flexible fusible interfacing for the hem sections.

Now it was time to start assembling! I sewed the front sections to the back sections at the side seams, pressed open the seams and catch stitched them down to the interfacing.

the side seam pressed open

the seam allowances catch-stitched down to the interfacing

 I then attached the front sleeve sections to the back sleeve sections, firstly by the upper seam and then by the lower seam. As I sewed each seam I pressed it open and catch stitched it down to the interfacing....amazing myself completely at my ability to do each step meticulously without cutting corners! (my normal "full speed ahead and press everything at the end" habit miraculously absent!)

Once the sleeve was assembled I decided to hem it before turning it the right way round and so I pressed up the hem allowance, basted round the bottom to hold it in place and catch stitched the hem allowance to the interfacing.

sleeve hem catch stitched in place

sleeve ready and waiting to be attached to the coat body

At this point I couldn't wait any longer  to see what it would look like and pinned everything together on my dress form to see whether it did actually look like a coat and............ta da!!

coat in progress

 More to come very soon.........xx