dressmaking

Purple minidress

It’s been a while because this dress took an age to make. It’s the first one of a set of garments inspired by recent Saint Laurent collections, in this case the orange minidress from Spring 2022.

A woman walks down a catwalk. She wears an orange minidress with a v neck, 3/4 length sleeves pushed up, very strong shoulders and a brown underlayer at the hem. Her accessories are large sunglasses, platform sandals, a short chunky necklace and large earrings — Saint Laurent Spring 2022 look 44, vogue.com

I’ve been drawn to this particular dress since I first saw it, in an advert in Vogue. It’s currently selling for an eyewatering £1795 at Matches, so the only way I could ever scratch the itch was to make my own version.

Orange does not love me, hence the switch to purple fabric. The fabric also had to be relatively inexpensive because realistically this is a stunt dress. I don’t have the Saint Laurent lifestyle. And yes, I should be only be adding things to my wardrobe that are going to get at least 30 wears, and this one seems rather unlikely to meet that target. I’ll have to count the entertainment value of making it and taking silly photos as something instead.

So my fabric is Croft Mill’s BB viscose ponte roma, rather than the luxurious wool woven the original was made in. I went for a knit for comfort and a bit of help with getting a good fit. This particular ponte turned out to be excellent value. I’ve had far pricier ones that weren’t as nice. Sadly the purple is now sold out but Croft Mill have it in other colours.

Having found the fabric I then needed a pattern. After studying every picture of the original I could find online I started with a Burda pattern for a knit jumpsuit which had the same strong shoulder line, and turned that into the basic dress shape with centre front and back seams and a v neck. That centre front seam isn’t just for decoration but turns out to be essential to getting the dress shaping right; it curves in just below the waist. There’s similar shaping in the centre back seam plus two dart tucks at the back. My original pattern turned out much too baggy and there was a lot of adjusting needed after I’d sewed it together. I’d added side seam pockets which made that more difficult. Pockets do bad things to the line, but any outfit that doesn’t have them generally gets worn only once. I ended up taking in the centre front and centre back seams and fiddling with the tucks. Taking in the centre back seam was sad because I’d done a brilliant invisible zip insertion. I couldn’t face ripping the whole zip out and redoing it so it’s a bodge job: I ripped out the lower half of the zip and shortened the zip to end just below where I’d unpicked it to, and then took in the seam below the new end of the zip.

The sleeve on the Burda pattern was one piece, and the Saint Laurent dress has a two piece sleeve with buttoned cuffs. I found a Threads tutorial for turning a one piece sleeve into a two piece but a lot of trial and error was involved. My first attempt was pretty sad: it didn’t have enough volume and the cuffs were too loose and too short. Luckily I had enough fabric to recut the sleeves after updating the pattern. After much agonising I used tortoisehell effect plastic buttons on the cuffs. I was very torn between those and some rather fine metal shank buttons in a dull shade of silver. But on the day I was doing the cuffs I was convinced the whole thing was going to be a disaster and fancy buttons would be a waste, so it got the plastic ones.

And here it is in all its glory.

The cuffs are still a bit too loose and the finishing and fabric don’t remotely compare to the designer dress, but I think it’s come out as something at least adjacent to it. But will I wear it? I did wear it to the pub straight after we took the photos, with my enormous purple Issey Miyake coat over the top which tones the look down considerably. I’m glad to have tried it out but I doubt this will be a wardrobe staple.

Thanks to my husband for the photos.

Buttons, buttons, buttons

I’m currently making a dress out of a Ponte Roma fabric in a lovely shade of purple. It’s a knock off of this Saint Laurent style.

A back view of a woman wearing an orange mini dress. It has three quarter length sleeves with buttoned cuffs, a back zip closure, and padded shoulders. — Saint Laurent mini dress, matchesfashion.com

The original has working cuffs, which require buttons. No problem, I thought. I have the family button box and there must be something in there that will go with the fabric. But no.

Matching the purple was clearly a non-starter.

I initially thought that brown might work. But none of these seem quite right.

Eight flat buttons in varying shades of brown on top of a purple knitted fabric

Maybe yellow or grey?

Four yellowish buttons, three flat one shank, and one flat grey button on purple knitted fabric

Gold is better. I especially like the black one with the gold border for this style of dress…but it’s very blingy and I think I’d feel a bit weird wearing it because I am not a lady who lunches. More like a lady who hastily grabs a sandwich. I also usually go for silver hardware on coats, bags etc rather than gold.

Five buttons on purple knitted fabric. One is gold and flat,

Two silver options here. I quite like both, but the shiny one is a bit too big for the size of the cuff and also too blingy for every day, and the dull one is maybe a bit too dull.

I’m probably over thinking this, especially as the first version of the dress is likely to be wonky anyway – pattern drafting isn’t something I’ve done a lot of.

Black and blue: vintage Vogue 1101

A woman with short hair stands with her back to the viewer. She wears a royal blue and black dress and a grey bangle.

Let’s start off with a back view for a change. In all honesty there is very little difference between the front and back of this dress as seen in in photos. It’s a beautifully simple design. The pattern is vintage Vogue 1101 by Christian Dior, all the way from 1982. Not the actual Christian Dior: the date puts it in the Marc Bohan era of Dior.

Here’s the pattern envelope. The red and black version is very striking but red and I don’t get on. This was an eBay find and it’s a Canadian version of the pattern: it’s entirely metric.

Photograph of a Vogue pattern envelope. It has a photo of a model wearing a red and black short dress and an illustration of a woman wearing a longer white and grey version of the same style.

Amazingly I found a contemporary runway photograph of the design. The red looks more orangey here. It’s clear the original fabric is slightly shiny and very drapey. The pattern envelope says it’s medium weight tissue faille, which is not a fabric I am familiar with. Also is it just me or is the skirt a lot shorter on the runway photo?

Photograph of a model with dark hair on a runway showing a red and black short dress. She has her hands in her pockets and the image is tilted so her body is on a diagonal. — Anna Bayle modelling the original of Vogue 1101, lofficielph.com

My version is made of much less exotic polyester crepe. Specifically it’s John Kaldor Prestige crepe in royal blue and black. I got it from Sew Essential. Handily they had the raglan shoulder pads too: being an 80s style of course it has padded shoulders. I love the look, but positioning and sewing the wretched things in is one of my least favourite tasks.

A full length view of woman with short hair wearing a blue and black short dress, black tights, and ankle boots. The dress has dolman sleeves and a high neck.

I can’t complain too much though. When I measured the pattern I discovered I didn’t need to make a single adjustment to make it fit me. I normally have to add a lot of length to the body and sleeves, so I always trace the pattern and make adjustments on the tracing. The pattern pieces didn’t even need cutting out on this one because the original owner had done that. Good thing, because actually cutting the fabric was a trial because of the large and awkwardly shaped pieces.

Annoyingly I don’t seem to have a photo that demonstrates the pockets. There are pockets. Boring side seam pockets, but entirely functional. I managed to hack a hole in one while running the edges though the overlocker, so the insides have an ugly repair – as always my finishing isn’t going to win any sewing prizes. I liked this dress enough to hand hem it but again it would probably be best not to look at the underside of the hems. They’re ok from the outside and that will have to do.

A woman with short heair wearing a blure and black dress with do,amn sleeves and a high neck

I like the closure on this: buttons at the shoulder rather than a zip, which might spoil the lines on the back. The belt is a bit odd. It’s a little short for wrapping around twice but far too long just to wrap around once. Twice seems the best option but if I made this again I’d add a little length.

A woman seen from the waist up. She has short hair and wears a black and blue dress with a high neckline. The dress has buttons at the shoulder.

I am not sure I will ever need another one of these – it’s very memorable – but I think it would work well in a lighter weight ponte as well as the crepe.

Thanks to my husband for the photos.

Yellow Blanca

A woman standing in a wood. She has short hair and is wearing a yellow jumpsuit over a black crew neck top.

Not that I like jumpsuits a lot, but this is the fourth one I’ve made in the last 12 months. It’s another Closet Core Blanca. As always I made view A because it has long arms and sleeves and I am permanently cold. This time I used the patch pockets from view B on the chest instead of the zip pockets, but it’s not much of a variation. All the difference is in the colour and the topstitching. But if anyone wants to compare: black version, grey version, blue version.

Line art of Closet Core Blnca jumpsuit showing two views. Both have a zip front, straight legs, hip patch pockets, and a waistband. A has long legs and sleeves, zipped patch pockets on the chest, and a belt with a buckle. B has short sleeves, cropped legs, patch pockets without zips, and a tie belt. — Closet Core Blanca line art, closetcorepatterns.com

This was a project inspired by the fabric: dark ochre stretch denim from Empress Mills. It’s bolder than I’d normally go for and I added contrast topstitching too. I didn’t have any black topstitching thread handy so it is all done in Gutermann Extra Strong, which is a weight between their Sew All and their Topstitch ranges. It makes a good bold line and comes in much bigger spools than the specialist topstitch thread; highly recommended. I used regular Sew All in yellow for the rest. I kept the yellow thread in the bobbin for topstitching to save time swapping out thread, but I do wish I’d switched to black in the bobbin when I sewed the zip in, as the yellow bobbin thread shows up on the black zip tape. It’s one of those things that doesn’t show from the front, but if I look down I can see the yellow stitching on the back of the tape and it bugs me. But not enough to rip out that zip and do it again. The stretch denim is a nightmare to put a zip into.

I used contrast hardware: a black zip with black plastic teeth, black buttons for the leg tabs, and a black belt buckle. The belt buckle isn’t a very satisfactory choice. The design means it needs to be under a bit of tension to stay closed, so my belt had to be made tighter than I’d like. The buckle is probably intended for elastic belts.

A woman with short hair standing on a footbridge. She is wearing a yellow jumpsuit over a black crew neck top, and black platform boots.

I shaved a tiny bit of height off the top of the trousers at centre back, and a little width off the back waistband, because I always seem to get a bit of bagginess there on this style. It’s helped somewhat. That big wrinkle in the picture is just the bottom of my t shirt. I couldn’t reduce the length much further, I’d never get in and out of it.

A woman with short hair walks away from the viewer towards a footbridge. She is wearing a yellow jumpsuit over a black crew neck top, and black platform boots.

Despite yellow fabric and contrast stitching and hardware this has come out more muted than I expected. Hopefully that bodes well for getting lots of wear out of it. And I had a small fear it might come out like Kill Bill cosplay, which it hasn’t, so that’s a bonus.

A side view of a woman with short hair standing on a footbridge. She is wearing a yellow jumpsuit over a black crew neck top, and black platform boots.

I added the patch before I realised why the design seemed familiar; it’s the Versace logo. Oops. I ironed it on very thoroughly before stitching it down so I can’t easily remove it now. No one has commented in real life yet; I’m hoping the fact you need to be really quite close to notice the detail means this will continue. Same goes for my dreadful bar tacks on the pockets…everyone who said no one other than a very critical sewist would notice was right. I hardly see them myself now.

A woman with short hair seen from the waist up. She is wearing a yellow jumpsuit over a black crew neck top. The jumpsuit has a black and gold patch on one chest pocket.

This jumpsuit means I’ve finally scratched my Blanca itch – four versions should keep me clothed for work for quite a while and I’m now keen to move onto more frivolous projects.

Thanks to my husband for taking the photos.

Cutting vintage Vogue 1101

This is the pattern I’m currently making, vintage Vogue 1101 from 1982. And here are the cutting layouts for wide (150cm/60”) fabric, which is what I’ve got.

My heart sank when I saw them. Single layer and lots of big pieces needing to be cut twice, not to mention the front, back, and belt being provided only as half pieces but not cut on the fold. And the top front and back pieces are asymmetric and cut once. The layout doesn’t even have the virtue of being very efficient on fabric.

In the end I made up my own layout which let me cut the biggest pieces on the fold and I added a seam to the belt so I could cut four shorter pieces rather than two very long ones.

I did the contrast sleeves by folding the fabric right sides together along the cross grain, cutting along the fold, and turning the top piece around so I had two full width layers with right sides together and the nap running the same way. Then the sleeves can be cut on a double layer.

It’s coming on nicely now but I doubt I’ll be making this one again any time soon.

Sewing plans Saint Laurent inspired

Time for another sewing plan. This one’s different from my previous efforts. Sewing my way through three wardrobe plans over the last couple of years has shown that what works best for me is to create entire outfits, rather than individual pieces that can theoretically be mixed and matched in lots of ways.

Lately I’ve been finding myself much less inspired by sewing pattern releases than I used to be. But I often browse Vogue Runway and there are two recent Saint Laurent ready to wear collections which I keep going back to: Spring 2022 and Spring 2023. I’m aiming to sew four outfits inspired by my favourite looks from those shows.

The first one is this stunning all-blue outfit, look 51 from Spring 2022. Here the main inspiration is the colour rather than the silhouette. You won’t catch me with bare ankles other than in the height of summer.

A model wearing a royal blue jersey top and royal blue cropped trousers walks down a runway. She also wears black short gloves, royal blue slingback shoes, big sunglasses and a chunky bangle. — Saint Laurent Ready To Wear Spring 2022, look 51, vogue.com

I already have a royal blue cropped jumper so I’m planning to make trousers to match, ideally a repeat of a pattern I’ve already made. I’m thinking high waisted, wide legged and floor length.

The Spring 2022 show had a number of surprisingly wearable jumpsuits. Look 39 is my favourite. It even has pockets. Those little pocket flaps at the waist are just decorative, but there are slanted hip pockets and the detail shots show back welt pockets too. The closure is interesting: the overlap of the fly extends across the centre front line and there’s a button closure in the waist seam. The sleeves are three-quarter length and the shoulders look very padded.

A woman wearing a blue denim jumpsuit, big glasses, big blue and gold earrings, and gold chunky bracelets. The jumpsuit has a notched collar, hip pockets, fake pockets flaps set into the waist seam, and three-quarter length sleeves. — Saint Laurent Ready To Wear Spring 2022, look 39, vogue.com

I have an old Burda magazine pattern with very similar lines that I am hoping to adapt to have the crossover fly. The Closet Core Blanca, which I’ve made several times now, will hopefully be a useful guide for getting the shape right on the bottom half because it’s similarly close fitting.

I love the shape of look 44 from Spring 2022: a minidress with a v neck, long sleeves worn pushed up, and very strong shoulders. The colour’s spectacular too, although I might go for purple rather than orange in my version. In the show this dress was worn with a brown layer peeking out underneath at the hem, but I’ve found the same dress on Matches Fasion’s online shop and there’s no sign of the extra layer there.

Saint Laurent Ready to wear Spring 2022 Look 44, vogue.com

I have some 80s Vogue patterns with similar strong shoulders that could be adapted to become this style; Vogue 1308 which I used for my yellow 80s dress is one of the candidates. The original Saint Laurent garment is made from something called ‘wool grain de poudre’, which seems to be a type of suiting, but I see this working best for me made up in a heavy doubleknit and worn with thick tights and trainers or boots.

A dress with a hood is so dramatic and the Spring 2023 show had plenty. However the versions in the show are going to require some serious adaptation to work for everyday wear; they were somewhat sew through and often backless too. Look 8, below, is one of the tamer ones.

A model wearing a sheer wine coloured jersey dress walks down a catwalk. The dress is sleeveless and has a draped hood which is worn up. The model
also wears wide gold bangles and high heeled sandals. — Saint Laurent Ready To Wear Spring 2023 look 8, vogue.com

I’m intending to make a slim fitting knit dress, probably from Vogue 8866, an old tried and trusted pattern sadly now out of print, and add a separate hood piece borrowed from this 80s pattern in my stash, vintage Vogue 1439.

And because I want to be able to wear it out of the house it’s definitely being made out of ponte. I’m thinking navy blue or a dark grey.

I may not do all of these in a row – in fact I want to make up the 80s Dior pattern I’ve already cut out the fabric for before I can even start on these – but I’m looking forward to stretching my pattern adjusting skills on them over 2023.

Not so mellow yellow

Last year I made two more Closet Core Blanca jumpsuits to take my total to three. And now I’m working on number four. This one is in dark yellow stretch denim. The colour alone makes it a lot more in-your-face than my previous black, grey and blue affairs, so I doubled down on that with contrast top-stitching. This needs to be really accurate to look good and at first it was going fairly well: the back has come out nicely.

The pattern mentions sewing bartacks to hold the front hip pockets in place ‘if your machine will cooperate’. I didn’t bother on my previous versions, but on this one I needed to hide a top-stitching wobble on one pocket so gave it a go. My machine did not, in fact, cooperate. They’re very uneven – weirdly the width is inconsistent which I don’t understand at all – and you should see the mess on the back. I’m relying on the fact that most people don’t look closely, as unpicking it now will probably not improve the effect.

And I also added a patch to one of the breast pockets. This Medusa is a decent colour match and seemed highly appropriate for me; anyone who’s been following this blog for a while knows I have a bad case of resting bitch face. I realised after I’d ironed it on and sewed it down that the vaguely familiar design is actually a copy of the Versace logo. Not what I intended at all. Too late now.

I’m quite pleased with the buckle I found for the belt though. I wanted metal and matt black, which was surprisingly difficult to track down.

I’ve come too far with this not to finish it now, but I do wonder whether the final effect will be tragedy or triumph. Watch this space.

Top N of 2022 part 2

Part two of my end of year roundup. I’m using the old Sewing Top Five series headings. The official blog series is no more but I’ve been doing it for years and it’s interesting to compare with last year’s post, well interesting for me anyway, so I’m sticking with it. I covered hits and misses last week. Now I have highlights, reflections, and goals left to cover.

Highlights: I gave away some of my pattern collection this year and it felt great. I realised I was damaging the patterns by cramming them into inadequate space. So I picked out the ones I knew I’d never sew and put them on Freecycle; rather to my surprise they were snapped up and that gave the rest some breathing room.

The only envelope pattern I bought this year

I’m still collecting patterns but trying to be much mindful about it. I think the only brand new envelope pattern I bought this year was Vogue 1853. That was for my husband and got sewed up before the year was out so doesn’t count as collecting. Instead I’m stalking eBay for vintage patterns, but I’m only buying ones I really love and might actually make. It’s dangerous though. I started off just looking for Claude Montana designs, but then the work of a couple of other 80s designers caught my eye too. Hopefully some of those will feature on the blog next year.

I thought about giving up my Burda subscription because there was a period where the designs didn’t speak to me at all. Happily it improved this year so I’ve renewed. I can see why people feel they’ve been repeating designs, but I am currently finding two or three appealing patterns that aren’t repeats in each issue which makes it worth it for me.

I also discovered the COPA pattern archive this year which has been great for dating vintage patterns. When I first found out about it you needed to apply for a user account to use it, but the pattern database is now accessible online without even logging in.

Reflections? I wasn’t as productive this year as last but I had one of my best success rates. I made fourteen things of which eleven get regular wear. Even the three that didn’t work very well have been worn out of the house on occasion.

I did less wardrobe planning this year. I sewed the 80s wardrobe I’d planned in 2021, but after that I gave up on drawing up elaborate plans and made three jumpsuits in a row instead. But I enjoy the planning and it leads to better outcomes on the whole, so I shall likely go back to it in a small way.

I just checked back on last year’s goals and was surprised to find I’d actually achieved them all. I made up some of my vintage patterns, made some clothes that weren’t black or grey, continued to reduce the fabric stash, and carried on blogging.

I’m having a hard time coming up with goals for this year. I have some vague plans: making up a vintage 80s Dior dress pattern and some clothes inspired by recent Saint Laurent collections. The Saint Laurent knockoffs are going to require some hacking of existing patterns to realise, so perhaps my goal should be to start adapting patterns rather than making them up as-is. I also need to make some practical things this year: a new dressing gown is one of them.

Happy New Year to all!

Top N of 2022 part 1

Time for an end of year roundup. There isn’t an official Sewing Top Fives blog series this year, but I’ll carry on using the format of hits, misses, highlights, reflections, and goals anyway. It’s Top N this year though as I only made 14 things in 2022. Admittedly there were two and a half coats in that 14…I’m counting Vogue 1476 as only half a coat because it’s more of a blanket with sleeves.

So onto the hits. It was a good year but I’m going to pick just one item to feature: my 80s coat. Most of what I made this year is getting regular wear, but this one in particular makes me smile every time I put it on.

A woman with short hair wearing a yellow-green boxy coat, black tapered trousers and yellow trainers stands in a bricked up doorway

The pattern is vintage Vogue 1767 from 1986, by Claude Montana. I love the colour and the boxy shape is very easy to wear.

I didn’t have many complete misses this year. I made three things that for various reasons don’t often get worn and here they are.

A woman wearing a black short sleeved t shirt and black tapered trousers stands in front of a stone building with a bricked up arch.

First up are the trousers from the same pattern as the green coat. They are a classic 80s carrot shape. I made the mistake of making two very similar pairs of trousers: these from vintage Vogue 1767 and another pair from vintage Vogue 1476. I prefer the 1476 pair and I don’t reach for the style enough that I use both.

Next is the Claude Montana tunic dress. The pattern is vintage Vogue 1071. The problem with this is that I’ve yet to find weather conditions it works for. It looks bad with tights, but it’s too thick and warm to wear when the temperature allows bare legs. It’s a conundrum. Possibly tights would work with different footwear, but I don’t know quite what.

It seems odd putting this dress in misses because in some respects it was a highlight of my sewing year: the pattern (vintage Vogue 1652, another Claude Montana design) is a rare one that took me ages to find a copy of, the construction was unusual, and the finished garment is spectacular. But I don’t wear it. I can’t help thinking there’s a brilliant garment in this pattern somewhere but this one isn’t it. Different fabric and a less fussy closure are required.

Suggestions for fixing any of those most welcome!

Happy Christmas all if you celebrate. I’ll cover the rest in an upcoming post.

Vogue 1853 Men’s coat

Winter coats are one of the best things to sew: a big crunchy project with lots of details in well-behaved wool. I’m currently well supplied in the coat department with several in the wardrobe, so had no space for another. However I’d been eyeing up Vogue 1853 for my husband ever since it was released – it’s exactly his style – and this year the navy surplus coat he’s been wearing for years reached the end of its life, so I had an perfectly good excuse to make yet another coat.

Here’s the pattern photo. We went for view B, the long coat.

There is a half belt which is designed to pull the back in a little, which is why it’s not lying flat in the back view below. The fabric is a dark navy wool/polyester coating from Minerva Crafts. I was very impressed by Minerva’s vast range of coating fabric. I often find their fabrics are more expensive than other companies, but they had a sale the week we were buying fabric so this one ended up being a bargain.

I made a toile but it turned out we didn’t need many changes to the pattern. The collar is seriously tall so I folded 1.5cm over at the top edge. And to give a little extra room I didn’t sew the front waist darts. I probably should have shortened the sleeves too, but we weren’t sure and I personally hate sleeves to be even slightly too short so we left them.

The lining fabric is grey polyester satin from The Lining Company. The lining was in my stash, left over from another coat project that didn’t work out, so I’m glad to have finally used it. It’s lovely quality, really heavy, and the colour contrasts with the navy without being garish. If I’d been buying lining I’d probably have felt obliged to go with navy in order to match the shell. I do like a contrast lining.

Before cutting out I made a separate lining pattern and some adjustments to the facings following the advice from the Ready To Wear coat sew-along by Sheryll of Pattern Scissors Cloth. I can’t recommend this sew-along enough; it makes inserting the lining and hemming quick, easy, and entirely doable by machine; at least it does if you follow Sheryll’s advice to check everything carefully before you cut. Which I failed to do. At first it all went well: Sheryll’s method for sewing the lining/facing/hem junction entirely by machine is brilliant: quick and easy and gives a good finish.

The sew-along coat doesn’t have a back vent, so how to draft a lining to fit around a vent wasn’t covered. I used the lining vent lines from the original pattern for the lining pattern and assumed it would all work out. Wrong. When I came to sew it I couldn’t get the lining to sit nicely around the vent when I attached it from the inside by machine. I ended up hand-sewing the lining to the shell around the vent edges and made a little pleat to make it fit. It looks OK now but there was an evening of much seam ripping and frustration along the way. Next time I’ll take the time to check the pattern first.

One thing I did plan carefully was the addition of an inside pocket, carefully sized to fit my husband’s phone, and it’s come out well. I was dubious about sewing welts in lining fabric across the bulk of the facing/lining seam, but with the addition of interfacing to the welts it turned out to be pretty painless. In fact there’s lots of extra interfacing in this coat: the entire front, the facings, and the hems are all interfaced with Vilene G405. That was a lot of tedious fusing.

And speaking of pockets here are the external ones. The pocket bags are all navy blue cotton poplin from my stash.

In theory you can wear the collar on this coat either up or down. Normally I’d press the edge seam on a collar slightly to the underside so it doesn’t show, but you can’t have it pressed both ways. I decided to err on the side of pressing it for wearing the collar up. I also added extra interfacing to the collar to help it stand up. Probably as a consequence it doesn’t sit very well when turned down, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem in practice.

There is no back neck facing which surprised me. I added a chain for hanging.

The design needs matching shank buttons in two different sizes. The recommended size for the larger ones is 3cm which cuts down the available options. We wanted metal ones and a fairly plain design. After a lot of looking we found these ones from Number Sixty on eBay and I’m very pleased with them. Hard to see in the photos but they have a grey patina that’s been scratched off in the centre to give a bit of interest.

And here it is being worn. Normally my husband takes the photos for this blog but as he’s the model this time all we have are my phone pics.

I’m really pleased with how it’s come out. And given how difficult it is to find coats my husband likes I’m definitely hanging onto the pattern. Maybe a grey one next?

Catherine Daze's Blog

sewing my own clothes