Coat Making Process

As I mentioned when making the toile I knew I was going to have a problem with the overskirt, but I first had problems with the collar.

When making the collar, I was able to get it to stand up nicely on my stand and didn’t think anything was the matter, I had always intended for the coat collar to be both able to stand up or lay flat to the body, but leave the wearer with the choice. However, I was struggling to create the choice. The idea behind the stand up collar was to help elongate the body further.

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The inner collar was inspired by chinese mandarin collars once again referencing the asian culture which I was being influenced by. I also found it very difficult to get under a sewing machine, even an industrial sewing machine with a walking foot broke 5 or 6 needles due to the excessively large thickness I was attempting to get through.

The skirt was a whole other experience. At one point in the making process I was ready to throw the coat out and leave it. This was when I initially made the skirt, it had no stability, even though there was stiffener inside, I think it just could not cope with the excessive over handling. I did eventually decide to insert some thicker interlining which helped to reduce the problem, although it was still not totally correct.

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In the skirt I used an interfacing known as ‘Visiline – Decovil I’. this helped, but wi was still not happy with the result of this.

in the end I unpicked and tried making the french seams smaller. this helped although once again not 100% but it is bearable. in order to accomodate making the skirt smaller, I was able to add darts in at the back to add more shaping which will help to create this illusion.

The collar also was not standing up, I did eventually reduce the size of the collar removing a panel and bringing it around further did help to make it free standing.