The Lady Grey coat

I finally finished the coat just in time to meet my girlfriends for a drink last week. Bonus. I'm not 100% happy with it but I guess we are our own worst critics. My momma used to make clothes for a living and she thinks it's great. Likewise B~'s grandma was a seamstress and she thinks it's cool too. I've had lots of compliments on it so far and thought I would share with you guys.

Please excuse my less than happy face. The place I wanted to take the pics had been gated off and this meant the wonderful arty shots were not happening. I was not happy with the prospect of using our garden but I think Spadger did a wonderful job on them.

Lady Grey: my nemesis?

Yeah so I'm being melodramatic. But my evening of peaceful and fulfilling sewing has not gone well. First the thread I'm using threw my tension off which meant I had to learn how to adjust my needle tension. So bad that it went but now I've learnt something new. Bonus.

Then I got halfway through my first actual buttonhole on this coat and suddenly had the paralysing though that it actually didn't want one where I'd put it. S'ok, it's double breasted so does need one there and I can even add an internal button if it needs one. So definitely a panic but I learnt what a double breasted jacket is.

I wanted to be at least half way through sewing the shell. Instead I've got half a buttonhole. Ah well. It's not the end of the world. However you wouldn't have believed I could utter that sentence if you'd seen the full on tantrum I had earlier. Phew, toddlers would have cringed!

So I leave you with a pic of my practice buttonhole. Not bad really.

Lady Grey Muslin take 2

So I decided that my muslin did need a bit of tweaking. I'm not going to all this effort for nothing right? So I asked for some advice and was told maybe a smaller size with an FBA. This would sort the shoulder issues for sure. Now I know that an FBA would do this, I have done them before. But the thought of cutting out new pieces made me feel a tad queasy. So I put the muslin on Vera and pinned like a mad thing. The result? I took out some excess material from the centre back, right side back and both shoulder seams. One fitting coat.



On the front I have decided to take a wee smidge out of each lapel to stop it gaping.



Once I have sewn that bit and put the collar back on I can mark up the roll lines for some of the tailoring shenanigans and then I can take it apart, trim off any excess from the seams that I don't need and think about cutting my actual material.

Eep!

Lady Grey Muslin

Well after much busyness I have finally gotten time to sew my muslin for the Lady Grey sewalong. It only took me a short while last night to knock together and I am quite pleased with it so far. I'm gonna post these pics to the Flikr pool and ask everyone's advice. as much as I would like to leave it as is I know I should really take advantage of all these wonderful people and their knowledge to fix all the niggly problems.


My only real beef with the pattern is that is doesn't seem to wrap as far round me as it should despite all the measurements being dead on. I could do all sorts of adjustments to make it so that it does. But instead I'm gonna move the button holes. It wraps round plenty and I am warmer than Satan's undies most of the time so that little extra wrap round would probably leave me hot under the collar. Plus it does have a belt do it ain't going anywhere!


Over the next 4 weeks we will put together the actual coat and hopefully be done by Halloween. Can't wait!