Vogue 8934: Take Two

Yes, I did. I made another winter coat.

Only the top button is button in this shot, it has a
button fly that would conceal the buttons.

I couldn't resist since I have this beautiful raspberry coloured Italian wool sitting in my fabric stash. I quite enjoyed working with Vogue 8934 so much so that I also couldn't resist revisiting this pattern. And so my journey into coat making continues.

L to R (clockwise):  underlining pinned to lining ready
to baste, elasticized cuff construction, printed side of
underlining fabric, finished cuff.  

The understructure of this coat has some upgrades to make it prairie winter ready. I underlined it once again but this time, shopping through my fabric stash, I found a remnant that worked out just fine. It is an Eddie Bauer cotton flannel with a wildlife print. This piece has been in my stash for decades. Back-in-the-day, when my two older nephews were wee little boys, I made them wee little shirts from this fabric. That was a very long time ago. 

Back to the understructure of this coat, the other upgrade was the inner cuff attached to the lining. This time I double the width so that it has the satin finish on both sides and lengthened it just a bit. And then I sewed the wrong side to the right side of the lining exposing the seam from the inside of the sleeve. Thankfully, it is in the inside of the sleeve and the only people who know about this is you and me. Shhhh, this year's first blooper is our little secret.  

I managed to sew this project with all the materials found in my stash. The fashion fabric, 70% wool and 30% polyester blend, was also a 2016 Fabricland find at 70% off. And the Kasha lining was scored at the last Fabricland member's sale a few months ago when it went down to 50% off. It is the last of the Kasha lining in my stash, so the rest of the year of sewing might be interesting.  

All the fabric was pre-treated at home. The wool fabric was tossed in the dryer with three large damp towel and then steamed pressed. The underlining and lining fabrics were tossed in the washing machine for a spin before finishing up in the dryer before cutting. All the fabrics handled the pre-treatment process very well. The only fabric that I had trouble with was the fusible interfacing when it came to fusing it to the wool. It wouldn't stick and I had to hand baste it to the collar. I machine basted to the front facing pieces.  

The coat was constructed with a variety of stitches. Most of the coat was constructed on the machine with the straight stitch (also known as the basic stitch). Elastic was held in place with the back-stitch.  The start and finish of the seams were constructed with the locking stitch and occasionally I used the back-stitch at these points. The buttonholes were machine stitched with the automatic buttonhole stitch--easy peasy. Hand-stitches included the basting stitch, slip stitch, and the prick stitch. All the buttons were sewn by hand.  

The Stats: 

Fabric:  6.8 metres (fashion, lining and underlining fabrics)

Buttons:  8 - 7/8" buttons

Interfacing:  1.8 fusible interfacing

Pattern:  Vogue 8934

Time:  I invested 46 hours into the preparation of the fabrics and construction of this coat.

Additional Tools and Supplies:  Sewing machine, walking foot, buttonhole foot, regular presser foot (for top-stitching), serger, threads (for the serger, sewing machine and hand-stitching), cutting table, scissors, thread clippers, pins, hand needle, wax, tailor's chalk, steam iron, ironing board, about 1 L water (possibly more for steaming the wool), clapper, tailor's ham, sleeve ham, jazz music and a few breaks for spontaneous dance moves to some good tunes and stretching.  

Happy Sewing!