Dawn’s Coat #11: Hem-hem

My lovely wife tried the coat on again, and decided she doesn’t want to lose any of the length at all, so a ‘normal’ hem was not in the running.

However, I noticed that somewhere along the line [maybe when I added the extra interfacing?] the back had become stretched/distorted and wasn’t lying smoothly along her shoulders.  I followed the wrinkles, and pinched out a teeny bit from the centre seam.  Much better.  I took a pic, and to my surprise, saw a couple more wrinkles in the photo which didn’t show to the naked eye.  Weird.  I pinched them out too.

I transferred the markings from the pins with chalk, and then got up inside the lining and did some unpicking.  Sigh.  Re-stitched, then pressed and re did the catch stitching and stuff.  Faffy, but I wasn’t about to let such a small tweak mess this project up.  Then on with the finishing:

Fings wot I done:

1.  I cut roughly 12 feet of 3″ wide bias strips from the coat fabric, and curved it slightly with the iron and some steam.
2. I trimmed the edge of the coat a tiny bit, and then sewed a 1/2″ seam, joining the bias strip to the coat, with the longer curved edge at the bottom.
3. I finger pressed the seam and under stitched, so that it rolled back neatly.
4. I attached the folded flat piping to the raw edge of the bias strip, raw edges together, and pressed it all into place before catch stitching the lot to the underlining.
5. I then got up inside the lining, and started doing some hand stitching to keep the lining nicely..er..lined up with the coat.  I stab stitched the collar seams together, then attached the hanging chain, and a label.
6. I added in some shoulder pads, made from some of the collar wadding.
7. I made thread chains here and there to keep the lining seams attached to the coat seams, and catch-stitched the facing into place.
8. I repeated steps 2-4 on the cuffs.
9. I then turned up the lining, leaving a little folded length, and stitched it in place over the raw edges of the facings, leaving the piping showing.
10. I sewed on the buttons, with some clear plastic ones on the inside for reinforcement.

Then I smirked, and called in the missus.

Badum-tish!

One happy wife, job done.

Photos of her wearing it tomorrow, as the daylight here is long gone, and indoor pics never really work well do they?

Right, what’s next on the list?