Finished: My Chanel-Style Coat, Part 2

My coat in all of its bouclé glory. I have reached my saturation point with bouclé, mostly due to this coat. Sometimes, when this coat was still a shapeless mass, I'd look at it on my dress form and wonder HOW DID I MANAGE TO PICK OUT THE WORLD'S UGLIEST FABRIC?? Then I'd remind myself that I actually liked this fabric, it's by Missoni and that's a fashion house with good taste, and let's get real, I paid $35 a yard for and I wasn't throwing that money out the window.


Purpose of garment: I wanted a three-season coat that could go with anything from jeans to a cocktail dress.

Pattern: Out-of-print Vogue 7978. Princess-seamed basic coat pattern.

Fabric: A Missoni wool bouclé from Paron Fabrics, black sunback lining (a lightweight lining with thermal properties) from Rosen & Chadick, interfacing and fusible underlining from Mood Fabrics, mohair-and-satin trim from M&J Trims (leftover from my LBD), notions from Greenberg & Hammer, all in NYC. Buttons from Button & Notions Centre in Rockville Centre, NY.

Achieving perfect or pretty darn close to perfect fit: I made a muslin and posted photos of it on the Great Coat Sewalong. I was really, really fortunate that the muslin fit well right out of the pattern envelope. (Size 14)

Design changes I made: I narrowed the sleeves for a more slimming line. The sleeves are bracelet length, but that was more due to operator error than anything else (see “Big mistakes I made”). I omitted the side pockets because they really bulked up the line of the coat. At Nancy K’s urging, I added four patch pockets to the front. (If anyone has any tips for achieving perfectly symmetrical pocket placement, please let me know. I basted, measured, tailor-tacked, ripped them out and sewed them on again and again, and then said forget it, this is as good as it’s gonna get.)

My coat’s interior: This was the time-consuming part because of the handwork involved (pad-stitching and catch-stitching). I’m skipping the details here because there are already good web tutorials on underlining, interlining and interfacing coats. Marji gave me some excellent information on an Armani-style interfacing which hopefully she’ll blog about when she has time. (I hope you readers aren't too disappointed with the lack of instructional photos. I mostly sew at night after work and I can't get good shots in my sewing area. Plus I still feel like too much of a beginner to offer my work up as an example for others.)

Lining the coat: I basically followed the pattern’s directions and did most of it by machine, so the only hand-sewing was attaching it at the hem and sleeve hems. I used a slipstitch jump hem at the sleeves and coat hem. Weights were sewn into the hem area at the front edges and seams to help the hem hang properly. (Sorry, I just realized I didn't take any photos of the lining!)

My sleeve caps rock!: I followed Els’s sleeve head tutorial that was posted on the Great Coat Sewalong and I humbly think my sleeve caps are a thing of beauty. I basted first for fit, then stitched and added the sleeve heads and thin shoulder pads. One sleeve went in perfectly; the other I had to rip out and fiddle with to determine why it wasn’t perfect like the other one. Turns out there was about ¾" too much ease at the top of the sleeve cap.

The extra touches: I used Photoshop and the pattern illustration to experiment with trim placement. With a strong, multicolored fabric like this one, I think less is more, so I went with trim only at the collar, pocket and sleeve edges. I spent about an hour in this fabulous little button shop on Long Island (thanks for the recommendation, Nancy K!) trying out many different button options. This black-and-blue cameo button with teeny rhinestones just popped on the coat. They were outrageously expensive but worth it.

Yes, I had my buttonholes made in the city: I am super-happy with the results and I’ll be blogging all about my experience at Jonathan Embroidery next week.

Tip: Silk thread makes basting so much more palatable—it glides through the fabric. I went through an entire spool of silk thread with this coat.

Big mistakes that almost took me down for the count:
One—Despite Marji’s warning on the Great Coat Sewalong to be extra, extra careful while cutting out the fashion fabric I got a little stupid here. I used my muslin as my cutting guideline and where I should have cut four front sections (two exterior and two as facings) I only cut two exterior pieces. And I did not have enough fabric left to cut two full facings, though I did have some fabric to work with. Of course Paron was sold out of the fabric. Sewing diva Ann suggested I split the facing in two and then seam the top half and the bottom half together, and act like it was supposed to be this way. Hallelujah, that worked. And with this bouclé you can’t even see the seam. (That’s one of the beauties of bouclé—seams and stitches just disappear into the weave.)

Two—I should have paid even closer attention to the grainlines, especially with a fabric with such an obvious weave. I thought I was doing a really good job here, watching my grainlines with respect to pattern layout, but if you look closely in the back you can see where one of my side panels is just a hair off. And I had to recut one of the sleeves because the grainline looked wonky, but I only had enough fabric left to make both sleeves bracelet length. (Good thing I like bracelet-length sleeves.) The funny thing is, I had cut the wonky sleeve—the left one—correctly according to the pattern’s grainline indication, and I had cut the right sleeve incorrectly off-grain, according to the pattern. But off-grain was correct if I wanted the weave direction to match the rest of the coat. Moral: When you have a fabric with a very obvious weave ignore the pattern’s grainline indications and use your fabric as a guide, especially with sleeves and curved pieces.

Bottom line: I love my coat, but whew, I’m so glad I’m done with it and can retreat to some easy-peasy things again. I’ll share a secret with you that helped me stick with this sewing project for the long-haul: I pretended I was making this coat for an FIT tailoring class, that everything I did was going to be inspected by my imaginary professor, and that getting an incomplete was unacceptable. This worked for me but don't ask me what grade my pretend prof gave me. (She's a really tough grader.)

Coming next week: A visit to Jonathan Embroidery. Have a great weekend everyone!