Ok, I am so done with this coat. I can’t even. It was half done when the store closed (it’s a shop project of course) and I totally lost steam and, well, blerg.
There’s nothing really wrong. The pattern is McCalls’ M7025. The fabric is a polyester coating printed with this gorgeous lace pattern. I am such a sucker for lace print! And a black to match. Neither are particularly great quality, and I’m dubious about how the print will hold up to wear as there’s a lot of white behind the thin surface printing.
I skipped the giant patch pockets.
The fit is good, if a little snug with all my interlining and stuff. I made the size 12 grading to a 10 only at the shoulders. (I raised it under the armpits a bit too much but that’s easy enough to adjust after the fact.) I thought the amount of length I added to the sleeves was completely ridiculous, but now that they’re on, they’re nearly perfect. My definition of perfect is probably an inch longer than normal people’s, but that’s the result of a lifetime of too-short sleeve trauma.
The bound buttonholes were a bit of an afterthought, and they’re not perfect, and I feel like they nearly killed me but actually it wasn’t that bad, just nerve wracking. Trying to do conventional buttonholes on a regular machine would’ve been even worse, though. And they look amazing so there’s that.
Oh, yeah, added braid piping between lining and facings.
And maybe I just didn’t have the energy for a really elaborate project. But I’ve been ogling this pattern since it came out and the red lace-printed coating was just too unique and perfect and, well, shop projects always seem like a good idea when you first take them out…
Anyway, it’s done now.
My favourite touch is the slotted seams I added along the princess lines, though it is hard to see in the photos.
I did a neat alteration to the back neck facing that I completely failed to photograph, too.
You can almost see it here… No, not really. Oh, the pattern has some separate lining pieces (yay!) but not all of them (aww) so the lining is supposed to have the extra seam partway down the skirt, too. I did not want that. It wasn’t too hard to overlap the edges of the two pieces to cut them as one.
Anything else to say? This make was so stretched out I’ve forgotten half of it. The sleeves are quite narrow at the upper arm, wide at the cuff. I do like the elbow dart for shaping though. Lots of sleeve cap ease. I chopped off a bunch.
Oh, yeah, I interlined with Thinsulate, body, upper skirt, and sleeves. Trimmed off the seam allowances and did butted seams on the body.
I must have miscalculated somewhere on what seam allowance I took off the front but otherwise that worked well for the bodice. I was a bit more stumped for the sleeves. (Incidentally, standard wisdoms for interlining seems to be “quilt it to the lining”. This probably works well, but I HATE QUILTED LININGS. They fill me with visions of really ugly early 80s parkas. Anyway, it’s really hard to sew a butted seam up a sleeve. Not impossible, but annoying enough that I spent several weeks avoiding it. In the end, I replaced the seam allowances I had cut off the edges of the Thinsulate with ugly flat bias tape zig-zagged on top so the bias tape stuck out past the edge of the Thinsulate, and underlined the coating fabric for the sleeves. This actually worked quite well, and I wish I’d gotten pictures but by this time I was in mad-last-minute-panic mode. Also you have to finish the edges of Thinsulate with a zig-zag at least, otherwise the outer layers shift and the inner fluff starts escaping.
It’s hanging in the shop now, finally. I will probably like it better by the time I get it back. It’s certainly very striking. I had been kinda hoping this would be the mythical “warmer than the winter coat” that I’ve been dreaming of for the past six or seven years, but I don’t think it’ll be quite there, alas. But at least I’ll look fabulous… 😂
Tanit-Isis Sews 