My Fairy-Tale Coat

It has been already a while that I finished my second coat. It is Vogue 8346:

I fall in love with this pattern  the moment I saw it. I like the flared skirt and the silhouette: both feminine and elegant. It took me three months to finish my version, view D (the one featured in the middle of the lower row in white). I spent a lot of time researching tailoring techniques and thinking about interfacings und underlining.

I started with a muslin. There were some minor issues like the need of a SBA (small bust alteration), but the main issue was the collar. It was just too big for my figure. So I drafted a smaller one and with that also changed the construction of it. Vogue just has the whole collar as a separate piece. I changed the upper collar to be an extension of the facing, which I think is the usual way for jackets.

The fabric I used is a rather thin wool-angora blend. I chose this by purpose so that the coat would not become too heavy. I underlined the whole coat with a cotton fabric, that gave some body to the wool, but did not influence the draping. The collar is interfaced with horsehair canvas, the front and back with linen. Every seam was catchstitched down.

A sleeve head for the sleeves:

And, of course, there are bound buttonholes. I wanted all buttons to be functional, so there were 8 buttonholes in total! I had some trouble to have no puckering around them and did not get quite the result I was looking for.

For the lining I used some amazing red lining fabric. To add more warmth I quilted “Watteline” to it.

The lining was inserted by hand. First, I let it hang free, but I did not like the way the hem of the lining behaved, so I sewed it to the coat all around.

I really love how the coat turned out. Everytime I put it on, it feels so like me and it keeps me really warm. It is a pity that I have to put it in the closet now and wait for the next winter.