I’ve got a formal wool coat that I never wear, so I’m going to try and use some of the fabric from that for the new coat. The old one has a lot of panels so some jiggery-pokery will be needed with sewing skinny bits together to make it work. Maybe I’ll use it for the hood, pockets and sleeves.

It will be a slow process because fatigue. Yesterday I bought the digital pattern. Today I printed the 40-something A4 pages of pattern pieces, and figured out which size to make. Tomorrow I will tape all those bits of paper together and separate each pattern piece! Then I will investigate what I can do with the old coat and how much more fabric I need.

Maybe I will head into town to find fabric on Friday. I think I’ll check if Stitch Kitchen has any recycled fabric I can use first. It’s fun starting a new project!

Thank you fedi friends for the inspiration 💚

#sewing

Today I spent ages crawling around the floor as I carefully lined up small pieces of paper 😆I’ve cut out the paper pattern pieces now, so that’s a relief.

This is the old coat I plan to deconstruct - I can use its red wool fabric for the hood, pockets and button loop strip of the new coat. I can reuse the buttons too.

That depends on finding some other fabric that goes nicely with it though! I will have a hunt tomorrow.

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I’m delighted that I managed to pick up almost all the supplies for my coat from Stitch Kitchen! It’s a social enterprise that aims to reduce textile waste. Everything in the store is donated - bits of fabric and haberdashery and wool and anything you might need for textile projects. They also run classes etc. Even better, they have a sale on and fabric, already sold cheaply, is half-price (ending tomorrow)!

#sewing #thrifting

Here’s what I got for the grand sum of $28! The main fabric is a beautiful soft wool. The photo doesn’t show the colour very well - it’s a soft beige and pink with a mottled design. There’s enough for the whole coat, but I think I’ll stick with my plan of using my red fabric for the pockets and hood to make it a bit more interesting.

The other fabrics are for linings, and I got some partly-used reels of matching thread too.

The only thing they didn’t have was suitable interfacing, so I bought that new.

Minnie likes the lining fabric 😆

#sewing #thrifting

Today I made further progress in my slow sewing project - I cut out all the exterior fabric pieces. Then I ran out of oomph so will cut out the lining and interfacing another day!

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I cut out the lining and interfacing for my coat today, with some ‘help’ from Minnie 🐾

That means the cutting out is complete and in my next session I can start the best bit - the sewing!

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My coat is starting to come together now - literally 😆

Next up will be stitching the sides together, then the hood, facings and lining.

I’m pleased with the way the colours look together.

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I learned a new word today - armscye. It’s a sewing term for the fabric armhole edge to which the sleeves are attached.

Might come in handy for Scrabble one day (I play that a lot). 😆

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armscye

A wet Sunday afternoon was ideal for sewing! I made good progress with stitching together bits of lining and facings for my coat.

I ran low on thread of a vaguely matching colour, but Mum (lives next door) had some suitable stuff in her sewing box. She doesn’t sew any more and was happy to pass thread on to me 💚

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When I started sewing up my coat I had 32 separate pieces of fabric (plus 8 of interfacing) - now I’m down to 2 💪🏼

Next stage is to join those together, but that will be on another day.

If you’re wondering why the sleeves are a different colour from the rest of the lining, that’s one of the compromises from using recycled fabric! That’s also why there’s a lack of pattern matching. The sleeves won’t really be visible and are nice and slippery to help slide them on 😆

#sewing