The pattern!

Coat Elisabeth Pattern

I drafted and uploaded the pattern at the end. Had to do a small battle with the print-at-home pdf. Till now I am winning but maybe it won't download or something and get its final revenge that way...
You must have a burdastyle account to download it, but the account is free anyway. They have a lot of other nice free patterns so that is great opportunity to join!
It is in my size - 36/38 in BWOF - I never graded something but here are some grading tutorials:

sleeves
bodice
lenghten
pants


Hm. There are no pants parts in this pattern, but I thought I may link it anyway. I think the principle is always the same.
A note to be made - the fit at the shoulder is so that you cannot wear a thick pullover underneath if you cut it in your measurements.
If you want to read all the posts on the coat - a sew along and instructions so to say - click the Coat Elisabeth tag on the right side.
In between I haven't done any sewing, cause I invested my sewing leisure time into the pattern preparation. But I managed to purchase some fabric and make a real bargain - even the selling lady was impressed. And that says something...
First a not-that-a-bargain-but-anyway-great fabric - it is a 100% wool linen. Never heard of this one before. It is called this way because of the weave art - the same as in linen. The fabric is very silky and smooth. It was on sale for 3.90 eu (19 eu before) and I will make high waisted wide legged pants out of it.




The real bargain was a luxurious men suit fabrics once in dark grey and once in anthracite for 1.99 the meter. It is 100% wool and drapes beautifully. I had to buy the whole pieces - they were remnants. I think I got like 3.20 of each. They will definitely become spring pants and maybe a jacket.





I love buying great fabrics on bargain.

I bought a ponge silk too (no idea what ponge silk is) but it looks like this and I will use it to underline the yellow dress.



Bye for now!

Coat Elisabeth Final

I made some photos myself at the end just to finalize this one. I will put the pattern for download in few days and link it to this post.





I must say I wear it a lot and I love it. It is very comfortable and chic.
Here links to all the posts on doing this:

the elastic at the back
the triangular buttonholes
the sewing order
the fusing of the parts

So done it is...

Funny backstage fact: This fabric was meant to become Matthieus first self sewn coat. He was eager to do that and bought like 4 meters of the wool fabric. At some point this fabric in the back of his closet became a major dread to his self confidence and time schedule. He solved it by giving the fabric to me and feeling free again. I still have like 2 meter of it.

Update: I made a technical drawing using this template. Was fun. The collar looks a bit like a plant pot... Actually Matthieu said I look like a light bulb when I close the collar. I know, he can be so charming...

Almost Last

This almost the last post on the coat Elisabeth, as I called it due to lack of imagination. The last post will be some shots of me wearing the final product. For this I must wait for Matthieu and his camera. First I will explain the coats front bottom edge, than the elastic in the back and I have almost nothing on the collar - cause it made me almost crazy, so I couldn't operate a camera...

First you have to flatten the edge of the front piece - it overlaps a bit with the back revers piece, which was cut shorter - 2 times the width of the front fold - in order to fit in the right way.



Turn it outside out. You sew the bottom piece of the revers with the long edge of the front piece together.

The pieces stay inside out. Then you stitch the side seam, while folding in the right place:



This is how it looks when you turn the right side.



Now the elastic in the back. I saw the technique on Paco Peralts blog. I used it to define the back side if I am wearing the coat without the belt. And even with the belt it shapes the pleats nicely. First I made a tube according to the required measurements - the width of the elastic and the span it has to shorten:


Than I pulled the elastic through and fixed it on both ends:


The result:


Than to the collar. It is sewn the usual way and very easy actually. Only my sewing machine couldn't handle the layers of thick fabric... I just flipped out at that point a bit. So there is only this photo:


You stitch the back revers pieces with the back undercollar piece (no picture of that one) together. Then you slip the collar between this and the jacket bodice and sew from the wrong side. The pleats of the collar were hand stitched in place beforehand.

As for attaching the lining check this burdastyle video out.

And now some detail shots of the finished jacket:

A Triangular Buttonhole

I made some triangular bound buttonholes for the coat - so here is a small tutorial how to make them. Click on the images to enlarge them.
To start you should take cut a rectangular piece of your fabric and put in onto the place where the buttonhole will be.
You draw the lines as follow - a is the height of your button hole, b is the diameter of the button plus its height.


You stitch along the buttonhole border lines leaving small gaps in order to cut the fabric piece easily there.

You draw the following cutting lines and cut...



Next you fold piece 1 inwards and flatten it with the iron so it stays in place:



Step 6 will be to turn piece 2 over, so you can flatten the edge too:



Fold the piece inwards on the middle line of the buttonhole. You can orient on the middle on the cut pieces - this time you don't fold them inwards too, but you are folding the fabric around them.


Same with piece 3:




You should flatten it again carefully so it is forced into the right shape. Then you stitch the line shown in the drawing in order to fix the pieces. You cut the surplus fabric.



This is what your buttonhole will look like then:



The close the backside you can cut the triangle out without a second piece of fabric onto it or with a very thin fabric - turn it around making a triangular hole and stitch the front and back side of the buttonhole together by hand.

Thanks goes to the vintagesewing and The Sewing Divas where I learnt how to do these.

Cheers.

Going On...

OK today I will just continue with the step by step sewing process of the brown jacket. I don't really have a name for it, but it will be something Elisabeth-ian - the collar just reminds me of that period.
The first seam I did on this garment was the bodice sleeve attachment.


Then flattened it:


And cut it, so it can follow the rounding:



Then I closed the shoulder seams:



Since it is extremely fused one gets a stand at the shoulder area just by stitching it together:



When all the seams are finished in the previous order, you get a weird looking woollen cross:



The next step will be to stitch the side seams all through the bodice and the sleeves:



You don't need to hammer it together even if it looks that way on that picture above. I could continue the cross joke here but I will just stop...
Till now it is extremely easy project as you can see. One thing maybe came to the attention of some of you - I haven't done the front and back darts yet. I left that for the moment after I can actually put the jacket on and check again if the darts are exact. I always prefer to double check this way. And actually at this exact moment something changed in the design - I made a pleat to check the width of the dart and I liked the look of it so much, that I just kept it in there. I think it makes it somehow special.



I got to the first decision here too, which was extremely difficult to take - do I make the cuffed sleeves I intended before or I leave them the way they looked. When I see this older images I quite like the design without the collar, so I might make a summer version this way.
So far, so well...

The First Step

So the first post will be about an almost done project that I will try to publish step by step. I made the pattern myself and intend to publish it as an open source thing on the www.burdastyle.com web page. So I thought it will be useful to explain the process. I guessed I made some mistakes too...
So first a sneak peek at the finished design:

Then the pieces without the collar, which I cut at the end after i measured the neckline again, cause distances tend to change when you sew. Front piece cut 2 times:
Front revers piece (not sure what it is actually called - is the piece that basically is sewn on the back side of the buttonholes...) - cut 2 times:

Back piece - cut 1 time:
and least but not last off course - the sleeves piece - cut also 2 times, since i have 2 arms...
So as you see I tried really hard to do things properly this time starting with the fusing. The light gray fussing is a light to middle weight, the black and white ones are of the same weight - middle to heavy. The sleeves fold is not fused, cause i intended to make a cuff, which didn't happened at the end - so they were indeed fused later on. At the round edges i applied a very thick stripe - the best is to take cotton tape for it i think - it is all about stopping the garment from getting baggy. So don't fuse if you are after the baggy style ;).


My infos of how to do that properly i got from those links:

Couture et Tricot
Paco Peralta
Assorted Notions
Fashion Incubator
Threads

So I must add that it is highly satisfying to have the feeling that you are doing things properly even if it takes time.
cheers.