Light coat or heavy jacket, whatever, it's finished

In a thrifted grab bag of cloth last year, there was someone's beginning of a baby blanket.  It was a big square, with a two-faced pre-quilted brown on one side and an aqua minky dot on the other side.  I picked out the stitching and used the minky as part of a jacket for me (blogged here, and, yes, I'm wearing it as I type this) and thought from the start that the brown would go into a bit of outerwear for the kiddo...which I finished today.

I knew I wanted to make something roomy, because it would probably be worn very few times each year and he has a lot of growing left--it's nice when my efforts aren't outgrown too quickly *glances at the last coat I made for him which he may already have been too large for last year--it never got cold enough to find out*

I thrifted this pattern

and had a moment of dismay when I realized the kid sizes didn't even go large enough for the size he is now (and I wanted to be good and not rely upon ease to compensate--coats need to be roomy.)  But!  The adult sizes start at pattern size 6, which is for a 30½" bust; the kiddo's current clothed chest measurement is 29.  Close enough.

...of course, measurements in the other directions were all too long, but that was OK, because I had a very limited amount of cloth to use, so I happily started folding pattern pieces shorter.  They didn't get quite short enough for the front and back to fit on the pre-quilted brown cloth piece, but that was fine because I also now had another thrift grab bag pre-quilted piece that actually coordinated so well you'd think it was intentional

And it was double faced with coordinating prints!  My print-mixing heart was joyful, buuut the kiddo wasn't so enthused about the floral side ("Flower on a coat doen't make sense.")  Not a problem.  Not gonna line this coat anyway, so some of the floral will still be visible inside.  (I considered lining it, of course--especially since I have that roll of thrifted lining in bright pale green that would match the green in the prints.  But, no--no lining for this.)

The cloth grab bag that yielded the printed pre-quilted cloth also had about a third of a yard of the dot print in regular yardage, which I used largely, 90° off grain, for facings.

I'd say things worked out pretty well

 Yeah, it kinda has that art sewing look, but it also kinda has that fashionable moving blanket look, so it balances.
 

 

I didn't have a zipper in the right length that matched anything perfectly (no I was not going to cut down the brown zipper with metal teeth, thanks) so I went with a coordinating color.  Any color that's not in the main print is a 'coordinate' right?

 And, yes, the zipper not being as long as the front was an intentional choice.  Really.


The way the top stitching zig zags past itself like that was something I'd first done around the pockets

because I wanted to top stitch beside the pockets, but not all the way up the side seams.  That part wasn't decided upon until I was actually sewing, so...yeah, more my usual "improvisational" work.

The improv on the sleeve contrast was at my usual level, too--that is, vaguely aware of what needed to be done and thinking I was doing it right and I didn't and I made it work anyway.  More or less.

It's a fairly smooth sleeve cap, honest.

 

 I did think of maybe some sort of appliqué on the back...and front...and sleeve...but I decided it's OK to be plain.  Sometimes.

And the unlined inside is a mess

but it's a completed mess. (Maybe you can see where I tried encasing some seam allowances in bias tape?  Yeah, didn't do much of that overall.)  I had just enough--after a bit of piecing--of the unquilted print to face the bottom edge, and also had a piece of the quilted cloth that I picked the quilting out if (which was easier than expected) and the sleeve hems are faced with the floral print.

May it fit him for years to come, and may there be enough cold days to actually use it...

My Halloween And Beyond Coat

In late September, there appeared an enormous bin of houseware linens in the thrift store, with a sign declaring "Everything you can fit in to a bag for $9.99."  I immediately made a ridiculous jacket, then...hmm...well...see that pumpkin print tablecloth on the bottom here?

 I wondered if that would make a good...coat...?

Turns out that if you use Vogue V8346

 then the answer is that it makes a very good coat.

Or maybe the word I want is 'ridiculous'?  'Good' and 'ridiculous' are not, of course, mutually exclusive.

The collar is made from something I thrifted that I'd thought was low-pile fake fur--once I started working with it, though, I realized it was high-pile felt, and with a noticeable wool content, too (itchy wrists always tell me when there's wool involved.)  The lining is the same grape print cotton used in the other jacket made from the super bargain linen bin, linked above.

Now...the first time I made this coat, which was in 2009 and looked like this

(and was eked out of a lesser yardage than the envelope called for and still managed to match the plaid lines and yes I'm still proud of that) I was...smaller...so the pattern was cut in a size that was a bit too snug for modern me.  Since I was intending this new coat as a Halloween costume element, I decided not to deal with the various adjustments and just went with smaller seam allowances and making the front closing single breasted instead of double breasted.  I also used only two buttons because I was just going with what I had in the stash.

What was this Halloween costume, you ask?  Good question.  I was just sorta going with "The Spirit of Autumn" and wore a big curly auburn wig (I wanted to stick leaves all over but ran out of time) and threw together a quick skirt made from some cloth that was in a huge thrifted grab bag.

A neighbor asked me if I was supposed to be Miss Frizzle.  Thinking of all the amazingly accurate Miss Frizzle cosplays I've seen, I was mildly offended ("Excuse me?  This is not good enough to be a Miss Frizzle costume.  How dare you."  So went the thoughts, but the mouth just said "Ha ha, no.")  Of course, I'd also had the idea to wear a giant pumpkin head, and spend most of Halloween evening sitting on the porch as kids came up and wondered if I was a real person or not...  Turns out I was able to get the same level of doubt in their minds by taping a die cut jack-o-lantern decoration to a dowel rod and using that to cover my face until the kids got close.  That was nice.

I decided that, since this coat print is as much squash as pumpkin, I could wear it through November until Thanksgiving, which I did when it was cool enough, and I got compliments on it from a lot of people, so maybe it's not a odd as I thought it was...

Halloween wasn't *that* long ago, right?

Soooo, yeah.  I have been sewing, but almost all of it has been doll stuff, so there hasn't been much inclination to post that here.  The Halloween costume stuff, though, that I've been meaning to post here for...a while.

The kiddo had, as I expected, been enamored of the giant flat foam cat face mask from Walmart, and we decided it could be a part of a Nyan Cat costume?  Maybe?  Sorta?

The first thing was a multicolor cape--not exactly a rainbow, because I was determined to use cloth I already had and that meant using a selection of chromatically adjacent synthetics from the stash--green, yellow, orange, pink, purple.

I didn't get a good picture of it

I cut the first panel freehand and copied that for all the rest.  They're 90° off bias, but it worked out fine for proper dramatic cape flapping.

The hood visible is part of the hoodie worn under the cape.  The kiddo had come up with the idea of having a star print on the sleeves, and I had just the right bit of cloth to use for that...and I had almost enough of it.  Mixing prints is My Thing, of course, and I think I cane up with a good combination of cottons, with the green knit--left over from the hoodie I made for him that he pretty much lives in now--for the hood and ribbing.  I used the same pattern, too.

I did get good pictures of the hoodie

It's like...every sci fi movie poster from 1978-1984...

So of course I used some Star Trek print for the pockets (but honestly only because I didn't have enough of either the stars or the stripes so I had to use something)

Just happened to have a really good separating zipper color match

thanks to random zipper ordering from WAWAK...  Things aren't as straight as they could be, but this was supposed to be a fast costume--it's not lined, either, although I really wanted to.

Nothing surprising about the back

Yes, I didn't iron anything, as much because I'm lazy as because it would be hidden by the, ah, 'toaster pastry' part of the costume.

The first iteration, in cloth-covered cardboard sandwich board form, was...a bit large

I made a smaller, softer 'toaster pastry' that was safety pinned to the jacket for trick-or-treating, but I didn't get a picture of it.  Let's just say the kiddo was a lot happier with it...

Part of the plan for the original enormous-in-retrospect 'toaster pastry' was that I would take the cardboard out after the holiday and sew the front and back parts together to make a pillow, and I do have a picture of that pillow with the smaller softer version, for size comparison

It worked out better, proportion-wise, in the second version, and, as you can see, I added some sprinkles.  The centers of both 'toaster pastries' are flannel pieces that were given to me by very generous people.

(And they generally now are used like this)

And then there are the rainbow pants.  I had nothing (well, nothing I wanted to use for this...) as the rainbow stripe used on the jacket had been just about all of that I'd had left.  I decided to *gasp* go buy some rainbow print cloth.

In my mind, I saw a denim, with washes of hazy rainbow stripes.  While this might exist, it didn't in any of the places I looked.  It turned out that no rainbow stripe anything existed in any of the places I looked, not even as a bed sheet I could cut apart. (Yes, probably could have found something online, but...well, things may have been getting last-minute at this point, as the kiddo was also having a costume birthday party before Halloween...)

So I improvised. (No-one is surprised.)

I had, not long before then, purchased a perhaps unreasonable amount of yardages from a thrift store, some of which had included bundles of "oooh I like that!" cloth mixed with less impressive cloth.  Some of that less impressive cloth was a fairly large piece of a white waffle weave cotton.  I cut pants using Burda 9672 (I think?) and sewed the front and side seams.  Then a layer of free local newspapers went down on the vinyl floor by the door to the garage while Husband retrieved the narrow paint roller from storage.  I made an impromptu palette and grabbed some jars of paint I'd mixed long ago for airbrush use, as well as mixed up a few more colors as needed, and started rollin' on the pants.

I let them dry overnight, then sewed the back seam and inseams, hemmed them, and folded over the waistband and added elastic.  They were a bit crunchy at first, but softened with wear

The final costume was a lot more fun than the actual trick-or-treating was...