My Dream Coat....

My new coat is DONE! If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook and/or Twitter you'll know I've been working on this project for months... I promised myself I would have it done for Vogue Knitting Live this weekend and I did it!

It is a lightly modified version of Vogue 1320 by Issey Miyake. I originally had bought heavy boiled wool for it, but realized after making a "muslin" out of fleece that there were too many seams coming together at the yoke and it was going to be bulky as all get out.  I found a wonderful dark navy/eggplant wool suiting locally that was a great choice.  It's not quite as heavy as I had hoped for, so I used cotton flannel for the interfacing and that seems to have bulked it up a bit. I did make it roomy enough to wear a sweater underneath, and that should help on cold days.

The biggest modification I did was to loose that goofy stand up collar and slap a hood on it.  My current totally trashed wool coat has a hood and it wasn't an option for me to make a new coat without one.  I did have to redraft the neckline to fit it, but that was easy in the general scheme of things.

A hard part was choosing buttons... but luckily I had Instagram and Facebook to help me. Obviously I went with the knots. Thanks everyone for your help. I am going to crowd source button options more often!

The hardest part was the buttonholes... I almost gave up and used toggle closures or frogs but I chose to be brave. I spent the weekend learning how to make hand bound buttonholes on scraps and then marked the front of the coat before diving in.

I found this blog post, this article, and my favorite sewing reference book to be invaluable.  I almost couldn't finish in time as I didn't think I had enough black buttonhole silk, but luckily found an extra stash of it in my grandmother's sewing supplies.... it proves that one should NEVER throw out crafting supplies.  I also found a whole pile of yellow buttonhole silk, so I'm thinking that is going to dictate the color of my next coat! 

I'm loving it with my new Marianne Dress too!  Slowly but surely my handmade wardrobe is growing....