Time for another project. I lost a jacket in Oregon. It was a puke green color, and first-generation fleece, and not particularly beautiful, but it kept me warm on cool nights in spring and autumn, and on a river. I am not in a position to craft a fitted jacket like that, but I am going to be on a mountain in the middle of summer fairly soon, and a beautiful over-garment of some kind that is also warm would be useful.
I think I look good in the Jedi tunic pattern I have from Simplicity. It can also be altered fairly easily for a lining, as I did on the Poet’s Coat — but the poet’s coat is a little heavy for mid-July.
(I’m surprised to discover that there’s no entry for the poet’s coat, I must not have called it that in the entry; but the red tunic is a variant of the same pattern).
A friend gave me access to a bunch of wool material. Wool is warm, even if the wind is blowing through it, and it tends to remain warm even when wet. It might get wet on top of a mountain in July. So, I made the shell of this coat or jacket out of some of that wool. The result is a very plain looking garment that is unfortunately quite itchy on the skin.
So it needed a lining.
And if it needs a lining, then it might as well have fancy cuffs, and some beautiful trim. Which I did put on the coat. Getting the hems right was tricky. Next time, I’m going to sew the fabric on to the cuffs, then sew the trim on the cuffs… and then make the cuffs and the sleeve simultaneously. It’s often the case that we learn our working procedures for the future, by making the mistakes of the present.
The cuffs still turned out mostly OK. One of the things that I’ve learned from a designer-engineer friend of mine, is that you should “make the whole prototype so that you learn where the mistakes are, and you have a better chance of getting them right the next time around.” It’s good advice, especially in the Maker movement or in a maker program. The learning in this sort of work comes from the mistakes, not from the perfectly-executed plan.
One of my critical pieces of learning from the last project, the green gown, was to do more pinning and more pressing. I learned something similar from the shirt-making process. So, I did more pinning this time around, and more pressing (ironing, really) before and after sewing different steps in the project.
The result was a much more finished-looking product. I still suck at lower-edge hems of garments, though, especially on costume pieces like this one. Still, the gold trim flashes nicely in the light (it came from Cloak and Dagger Productions, which is fairly local to me). The grid-like pattern that forms the cuffs appears to be the underlying grid for a tile pattern, and references my own recent obsessions with geometry.
Though not quite finished, the coat has an unusual lining. I had intended to line it with linen, but I turned out not to have enough linen for the project. So I searched around among my fabric scraps and came up with what felt like an inspired idea. From the outside the coat is very plain and severe — black wool fabric, with trim based on geometric and floral designs. It’s very orderly and regular, and not very showy despite the gold trim.
It’s very me, in that sense. The coat has pretty clean lines and a very plain form — not quite shapeless, but not really a modern garment either. It needs a belt, and I don’t know if I’m going to make a belt and attach it; or make belt loops for a belt and leave the belt for another day. Either way, pretty plain, right?
However, the interior of the coat is constructed around a piece of tie-dyed fabric that someone gifted to me. I think they thought I would use it as an altar cloth, or a wall hanging. If that was its exclusive intention, I’m sorry. It’s now something else — probably irreversibly, at least until someone cuts this up and makes it into something else, which I hope they’ll do when I’m done with it.
There’s something wonderful about this coat, plain and severe on the outside, almost Saturnian, concealing a riot of color in its lining. It’s possible the garment will now be too hot for its intended purpose. I’m sorry if that’s the case. There are still a number of mistakes and problems with it, but it’s a lot better than anything similar that I’ve constructed (and this is now the sixth or seventh time through this pattern). Each time I make this, I make more variations and changes than I did the time before.
The result is that I can now say with some confidence that this is a great pattern for teaching young people the basics of sewing. Some of the other pieces in the collection are likely not worth the effort — the ‘fake’ undertunic or dickie is a little silly, and the outer cloak requires a LOT of fabric for a first-time sewing student’s starter project, and the shoulder tabards/armor are not well thought out for my taste.
But this tunic/coat has a lot of potential in it, and it can be made to do a variety of cool things. It’s worth a look in a school MakerSpace that’s trying to build up a sewing program.
