Herringbone Coat: Finished!

My "Herringbone Coat" is finished! Here are some photos of the completed coat, along with a few little details. . .

Front and back:

                                                                     Finished collar:

                                                                Back sleeve detail:

                                          In-seam pocket at the side of the coat.

The bound buttonholes are now open and ready for use!

                                   
I braided the button "stems" using the YSL technique from Claire Shaeffer's Couture Sewing Techniques to lift the buttons from the surface of the coat and help them to sit nicely in the buttonholes. When sewing them in place, I also reinforced them from the wrong side by sewing through small, clear buttons (these are visible in the full-lining shot in the post about the lining).

Large snaps, covered with lining material, fasten the under-lap instead of buttons. They are sewn to the facing, directly beneath the ornamental buttons that are sewn to the outside. Tany at Couture et Tricot has posted an excellent tutorial for covered snaps, which I found so helpful when making these (thank you, Tany, for sharing your technique!).

                  Understitching at the pocket opening helps hold the pocket lining neatly in place.

                  
The wool was somewhat difficult to photograph, as it tends to appear differently under various light souces, but I've tried to adjust the images as best I can (the two photos of the pockets are the most accurate).

I'm so excited to have this finished! It's been a long project, but I've really enjoyed the opportunity to practice my tailoring skills, and I'm grateful to God for giving me the time and resources to undertake this project :-)   

Herringbone Coat: Lining and Interlining

Because the fashion fabric for my coat is lightweight, I decided to use an interlining for a little extra warmth. I prepared the lining panels for this step at the beginning of the project by basting a layer of cotton flannel to the back of each piece.

After doing this, it was just a matter of assembling the lining pieces as usual, except that the interlining seam allowances must be trimmed close to the stitching, to reduce bulk at the seamlines. Before stitching the lining to the coat, I also trimmed the interlining within the hem allowance and hemmed the lining by machine.

I used the machine to attach the main portion of the lining to the coat, as I needed to save the time it would have taken me to do it by hand. After the main portion was secured in place, the sleeves were set to the armholes with slip-stitching.

At the center back of the lining, there is a pleat for ease of movement. The interlining material wasn't too thick, so I made a small center-back pleat in this piece, as well, though I pressed it in the opposite direction of the pleat in the outer lining before basting the two panels together.

 

The lower edge of the lining is hemmed separately from the coat and is held close the coat hem by swing tacks. The photo above offers a peek at the flannel interlining.

 

When drafting the pattern pieces for the lining, I modified the top of the back lining panel make to room for a neck facing. It wasn't totally necessary, but I wanted this coat to have one. After all, it makes a nice spot to stitch in a label!

 

The label fabric is from a piece of pinwale corduroy that I found in my scrap box. A bit unusual, perhaps, but it provides some textural contrast. I stabilized the wrong side of the corduroy with a piece of sew-in interfacing, and experimented with the embroidery stitches on my mom's Kenmore machine. Once I found a design that I liked, I trimmed away the excess interfacing, turned under the edges of the label, and slip-stitched it to the facing at the back of the neck.

Herringbone Coat: Hem Interfacing

Just a quick post with a photo showing how I interfaced the hem of the coat - at this point it's very close to being finished, as I've set the sleeves and also attached the shoulder pads and sleeve heads (no pictures of the latter two, unfortunately). 

I referred to the Tailoring book for this step and have completed the hems of both the lower coat and sleeves. The hem is interfaced with wide strips of bias-cut hair canvas, which helps bear the weight of the hem allowance and lends a bit of "body" to the hem. After this, the fullness of the hem allowance is eased up with a row of machine basting and shrunk with steam. Finally, the interfacing strips are secured to the coat with hand stitching, and the hem allowance is the secured to then interfacing strips.

  Almost there! The main part of lining will be attached by machine, so hopefully I'll soon be able to post pictures of a finished coat :-)

Herringbone Coat: Two-Piece Sleeves

As I mentioned when introducing project, I decided to substitute a two-piece sleeve from another coat pattern for the one-piece sleeve in the pattern for this coat. My reason for doing this is simply that two-piece sleeves can often provide a nice fit and range of motion because they're of the way they're drafted, with ease at elbow joint and a slightly curved arm, so that the sleeve hem will fall toward the front of the body (similar shaping is also achieved in a single-piece sleeve with an elbow dart). Even when the arm hangs at the side of the body, it's still slightly bent, so the shaping of the sleeve accommodates this, as well as allowing the arm to bend easily.

The pattern consists of an upper panel and and undersleeve panel. I borrowed both the sleeve and it's armhole from Simplicity 4403 (now out of print) and aligned the armhole with the shoulder point and side seams of the Butterick bodice before cutting out my muslin.

 

The simplicity pattern instructions use basting stitches to ease in the elbow shaping of the sleeve, but I found that it worked well to ease in the fullness with extra pins and place the side of the sleeve that needed to be eased toward the feed dogs of the machine when stitching, using the movement of the feed dogs to pull in the extra fabric.

 

 After completing the first seam of the upper and under sleeve, I pressed the curved area over a tailor's ham so that the seam would be smooth. For the second seam, I used a seam roll.

This picture of the back of the sleeve shows how it's curved toward the front of the body, even though the coat is just on my dressform and the sleeve is hanging "straight."

Herringbone Coat: Upper Collar and Front Facing

At the time of my last post, I was working on the seams of the lower coat, which included in-seam pockets. The lower center front panels coat also needed to be interfaced, but since they didn't need as much shaping as bodice, I decided to interface these panels with muslin rather than hair canvas. As the pictures show, my progress has jumped ahead quite a bit; the skirt portion of the coat has been seamed to the bodice, and the upper collar and facing have been attached, too.

Since the wool that I used for this coat is the same weight as recommended by the patten, I didn't need to adjust the under collar for the "turn-of-cloth," as I found it had already been accounted for.

Though none of these photos show it, I modified the back lining pattern to include a back neck facing. This way, the facing from the front continues around to the back of the coat (this was not absolutely necessary; it was simply a detail I preferred).  

Once the upper collar and facing were seamed to the coat, I followed the tailoring instructions in the RD Complete Guide to Sewing to trim, grade, clip and press the seam of the collar and center front. They're very detailed and I always find them helpful when dealing with is step in my jackets or coats. After this, I rolled the seam toward the under collar and used tailor-basting (the diagonal white stitches in the photo) to hold it in place for hand-understitching and more steaming.

With the facing covering the inside of the coat front, openings needed to be made in order to access the wrong side of the bound buttonholes. Usually this can be done by simply cutting a slit the length of the buttonhole, turning under the raw edge, and slip-stitching it to the back of the buttonhole, but since my fabric tends to fray, I opted for a different technique called the "windowpane" method. This involves using a patch of facing to make a little window where the front facing meets the buttonhole.

 

 I used silk organza for the facing patches because it's strong and presses crisp at the edges. 

On the right side of the facing, it yields a neat little window that will be slip-stitched in place around the back of the bound buttonhole.