The Return of the Plaid

So!

I was extremely unhappy with the last two projects, and I think a lot of it had to do with the desire to go outside my usual fabric choices.

I still didn't want to default back to printed cottons, though, and decided to use some fabric I'd thrifted ages ago: a wool twill plaid in purples, with gray and white, bafflingly block fused with some super slippery synthetic tricot.

I knew I wanted to make a coat from it, and I knew the fact that the plaid was large meant I'd have to be cautious with fabric use, so none of my preferred princess seam, flared coat patterns would work.  I'd ordered a bunch of clearance patterns from the Simplicity site a while ago, including McCall's 7847 (image from the Simplicity site, where it's still available as a PDF as of this post)

It's a Learn to Sew pattern, meant for faux fur, but it had the simple construction I wanted, and I was confident it would work with this wool instead of faux fur. Even with the pattern matching (horizontal only), and adding way more interfacing than the pattern wanted, and adding welt pockets, it seemed like it should go together quickly.  And it did!  It's just that the work ended up being spread over nearly three weeks, because first there was PMS, which made me question the previous things I'd sewn and my ability to ever make anything good again, then there was my period, which destroyed motivation, and then I got sick (all in my tonsils), which also didn't do much for motivation.

Then I finally finished it and it was super disappointing as a coat

 but fantastic as a jacket. 

I cut it in size medium at the top, grading from medium to large from under the armscyes to the hem.  I cut the sleeves at small at the top curve (to eliminate ease.  ease is the enemy of pattern matching on a sleeve seam), extending to full medium width at the sides.  Everything ended up just a bit too snug to work as a coat that might be expected to go over bulky layers.  It works wonderfully over a regular shirt, and is a lot of fun as a jacket.

In addition to trying to puzzle out pattern matching--which worked well enough horizontally, but I managed to mess up every way possible vertically, even when I actually remembered to think about it--I added details that weren't in the actual pattern.

 

The extras include the fabric back facing, where the pattern wanted the lining to go all the way to the collar, plus adding a small center back pleat to the top of the lining.

The pattern, being meant for faux fur, didn't include any interfacing, so I knew I was going to add interfacing in the collar and lapels.  Martha Moore Porter has recently started sharing a series of videos showing how she makes coats, and I also knew there were a lot of posts on her blog about making coats, so I poked around that between video uploads (the series is not yet done as of this posting.  "Being sick" does not negate my impatience) and got ideas for more places to add interfacing, especially the tops of the sleeves and bodice front and back.  I was reminded of putting interfacing at the hem areas and behind the welt pockets, having been instructed to do those steps by various motorcycle jacket patterns. 

I thought I was doing things the right way to have the front pattern match when buttoned, but I did not.  This is fine, on the one hand, because it turned out too snug to wear comfortably buttoned, but, on the other hand, it led to the vertical stripes not being centered...although that might also have been caused by the decision, which I have no idea why I made (my best guess is that I thought moving things enough to center the stripe would use too much fabric?), to make the center back next to a set of stripes, instead of, y'know, centered in them.

 

I will take a moment to note that the wool fabric pressed so wonderfully that I decided to forego all top stitching in this project.  Me.  Although I did edge stitch the sides of the pocket welt flaps, instead of inconspicuously hand stitching, because, again: me.  The lines of stitching aren't obvious, again thanks to the nice fabric. 

 

I did pretty well with the horizontal stripe matching, even on the seam attaching the sleeves to the armscye 

My fabric length was too limited for me to consider also attempting vertical pattern matching, even if I had thought twice about getting the center back on a centered stripe.

I'll go ahead and show the back, with that uncentered center.

When I first cut the upper collar, I aligned it with the uncentered back stripes, and it wasn't until I basted the completed collar unit to the neckline that I realized that that made the stripe placement on the collar aggressively unbalanced on the front.  I removed the basting, picked out the stitching, and cut a new upper collar (very happy I had enough fabric left to do that), making an effort to keep the stripes far enough from aligning with the back stripes that it wouldn't look like that was something that almost happened, but I wasn't paying attention (because, still: me.)

Because I had been good and thoroughly clipped and notched and even graded the seam allowances, I had to pin the re-used under collar carefully to the new upper collar before stitching.  It all worked out! 

The lining fabric is the very last of a bolt that I thrifted years ago, and I didn't, technically, have enough left.  I cut the sleeves last, getting as much as possible from the fabric on the grain, then cutting the remaining few inches of the side from an area across the grain, and sewing them together.

I machine sewed the sleeve lining to the cuffs by bringing the parts through the gap in the unsewn hem lining and butting the edges together before sewing.

I was able to sew all of the lining to the hem, awkwardly using the unsewn areas at the bottoms of the lining-facing junction to turn things through.  Then!  The unavoidable hand stitching, closing up the bottom few inches of the lining on each side, and tacking down the very ends of the wool-on-wool at the hem.  This side is actually the worst, and it's not that bad, especially considering it'll be at about knee-level and on the inside, barely visible during normal wear.

What else...I made shoulder pads from polyester batting and the shell fabric, with the tricot side out to keep things as slippery as lining, and also cut some of the shell fabric to be sleeve caps.  Neither of these were in the pattern instructions.

 

The pattern also wants the front closed with heavy snaps, because it's meant for faux fur.  Martha Moore Porter likes bound buttonholes, and I might try those in the future (especially since I have the right cams for the buttonholer), but those have to be made before sewing on the facings, so I waited until the end and used the buttonholer.  The fabric and interfacing layers were just thin enough to fit.  It was nice to be able to align the buttonholer foot with the plaid stripes and get nice, on-grain horizontal buttonholes.  I also used the plaid stripes, instead of the sewing gauge, to figure out where to put the buttonholes.

I do like this!  It's just too small to work as a coat, but I feel confident cutting future versions in large or extra large will provide more than enough room for bulky layers underneath.  I'll probably never make it in fake fur, but, because it's me, you'd probably not be surprised to know there is a high probability it will be made in heavy tweedy patchwork, someday.