Winter coat using the McCall's pattern M7848

I finished a winter coat that had been in progress since the fall break. First, here's a video about making an inside pocket for it. 

After that, it was time to sew the lining in place. 

Making a zipper pocket

I uploaded this video a few days ago, but forgot to add it here. This is about making a simple zipper pocket. It's really the simplest design you can make. 

The rest of the pinstripe fabric

I had bought 4 meters of the pinstripe fabric, and to  my surprise, there was still plenty of it left after the three pieces (blazer, vest and pants) I had planned to make. My first idea was to make a skirt using the rest of the fabric, but then I came across an even better idea.  It was a dress that's basically a combination of a vest and a wrap around skirt. It is from Burda 2/2020, pattern 113.

I used the pattern, but discarded the instructions after reading them and finding them unnecessarily complicated. Also, I had to make some alterations and that would be easier with a different sewing order.

I started by making the bodice. I used the same lining fabric as for the pinstripe vest. The main difference in this dress was that the facing was much wider.

Here is the bodice ready for sewing the waist seam. So it's basically a vest with the hem seam left open.

One thing I made according to the instructions were the pockets. They looked nice in the magazine pictures and were quite easy to make. I was running out of the blue lining fabric, so I used another fabric for the pockets. It's not like it's going to show, and even if it does occasionally, so what?

I sewed all the skirt pieces together, and here you can see the pockets pinned in place. The back of the dress is in the middle, so the pockets are facing the correct directions.

I sewed the lining to the right edge of the outer part (on the left in the picture). Then I sewed the upper edge to the hem of the bodice. That left part of the upper edge on the left unsewn. I sewed that part and the left vertical seam (attaching the lining) separately. The reason for doing it this way was that I wanted to get the bodice attached first, so I could then tackle the front left separately.

I didn't have quite enough of the pinstripe fabric and the front left (that would go under the front right when wearing the dress) was shorter than in the pattern. The front left should have reached the right side seam, but it ended up falling 20 cm short, even after I had made it from two pieces instead of cutting it on fold as it was supposed to. Fortunately, none of this matters as the additional seam is hidden under the front right and the missing 20 cm do not affect the wearability or looks of the dress in any way.

Finally, I turned the hem of the outer fabric and lining, and sewed the buttons. The buttonholes were another thing I made according to the instructions. They required leaving parts of the waist seam open and then finishing the edges of the holes by hand sewing. The last part was to sew a snap on button to fasten the upper corner of the front left underneath the front right at the waist.

I'm using this dress with long-sleeved shirts and pants. The weather is getting colder, so it's nice to have an extra layer on top of them. And I really like the big pockets. My mobile phone fits in there even in a horizontal position.

Pinstripe Blazer

In this semester, we have been making clothes with lining. We started with dresses, but I'm starting here with the pinstripe blazer I made. The pattern is "Blazer 101" from the English language version of Burda, issue 10/2018. The description below explains the basic steps, but I may have omitted something, so the best source of instructions for this is the magazine as it has quite detailed instructions of making this.

This is European size 40, which is equivalent to modern US size 10. Pattern sizes can be so confusing, because magazines like Burda use modern sizing, whereas the McCall's coat pattern I've got has totally different sizes. I read somewhere that it's because they use sizes from 50 years ago. So, my size in the coat pattern is US size 14. You really have to go with the bust and hip measurements (waist is easy to fix, if required).

My bust and hip are basically the same as in Burda's size 40, but my waist is currently 80 cm, whereas the pattern has 74 cm, so I had to add 6 cm to the waist. I also have shorter arms. The pattern had 63 cm, which I had to shorten to 60 cm.

After copying the pattern and making the required changes, it was time to cut the fabric. I've always enjoyed making jigsaw puzzles, so it's kind of fun trying to find the arrangement with the least fabric wasted.

The next step was adding interfacing to the parts that needed it. I pinned the pieces of interfacing in place as I was cutting them, because it's so easy to get confused about what goes where. Also, this way the pieces stay in place while you're moving everything to the heat press, and you just need to remove the pins before pressing.

Then I sewed the darts and made the pockets, which are double welt pockets with flap. This is just one design that uses welts. It's interesting to see how many pocket designs incorporate the same elements, just in slightly different combinations.

When the welts were ready, it was time to add the flap. It's hard to align the stripes when the darts make them angled, but I'm pleased with this result.

The lining fabric I got for the blazer was red, so the outer pocket fabric is also red. It was fun to get some color to the blazer, even if it's in places where it doesn't show when you're wearing the garment.

The next part was the collar. In the picture, the narrow part is the collar stand and the wider part is the actual collar.

Here you can see the collar sewn in place (after sewing the shoulder seam). The corner is tricky to sew and I messed it up in the practice collar I made, but this time I managed to sew it as it's supposed to be.

So this is the progress so far (the back piece is out of the picture). Then it was time to sew the sides seams and sleeve seams and fit the sleeves.

When fitting the sleeves, we found out that my right shoulder is 2 cm lower than the left. I could have ignored that, because all my clothes so far have had identical shoulders and I've never even noticed anything. However, as I had the chance to get the blazer fitted to me, I decided I wanted to fix this. So, I opened the right shoulder seam up to the collar stand seam and raised the shoulder of the back piece by 2 cm.

After fixing the shoulder, I sewed the sleeves place and it was time to move on to the lining of the blazer.

The lining required less parts and I managed to get even less wastage. I save the leftover parts for my doll projects, but in this case, there wasn't anything large enough to be usable even in those.

The lining is fairly easy to sew. You just make another blazer, but wrong side out. You need to leave a 15-20 cm opening in one seam of one sleeve for turning the blazer right side out at a later stage. The white piece showing underneath the lining on the right, is a thin shoulder padding. I don't like how shoulder paddings feel, but having even thin ones gives the shoulders a better shape, so it's a compromise between looks and comfort.

You sew the lining in place by placing the two parts right sides together and sewing the sides and upper edge (the hem stays open at this stage). Then you turn the blazer right side out, push the lining sleeves inside the outer sleeves, make sure they're straight, pin the lining to the outside fabric in one place in the cuff to make sure the lining sleeve stays straight, and pull the sleeves out between the outer and the lining. It may sound complicated, but when you've done it once, it starts making sense. Next, you pin the cuffs, right sides together, and sew them.

After sewing the cuffs, you turn the blazer wrong side out to sew the hem. Here you can see how to sew it when the bottom of the front edge is rounded.

Then it's time to turn the blazer right side out again. You do this through the opening left in the sleeve lining. After turning the right side out, sew the opening closed.

This pattern had a curious way to make the slit in the back. It took a while to understand what I was supposed to do, but I figured it out eventually. This had to be sewn by hand as there was no other option.

All that was left was making buttonholes and sewing buttons. The picture below shows a machine for making keyhole buttonholes (tailor's buttonholes). They look much neater than basic rectangular ones. You need a bit of practice to get the placement of the buttonholes right with this one, so I had a leftover piece of the pinstripe fabric to make quite a few practice buttonholes before daring to make them in the actual blazer.

You can see the finished blazer in the first picture of this post, but here are pictures of some details.

The placket in the sleeve is a fake one. So there's a placket, but the lining was sewn in place as if there wasn't one and the buttons are sewn all through to keep it closed.

Here you can see the keyhole buttonholes. The buttons are shank buttons made of metal.

More pockets

After finishing the double pockets, it was time to make some more pockets for the vest. These go above the other pockets.

The first thing was to make a pattern, and I had no idea how to do that, because the pockets needed folds. However, that's what the teachers are for. It turned out to be quite simple, you just need to know what to do. In this case, it was the same thing we did when making the patterns for the bell-shaped skirt.

You make a pattern for a flat pocket, cut it as shown in the picture above, and then spread out the bottom ends of the outer parts a bit. In this case, there is 1 cm added to both corners. Then you glue the pieces in place and draw the seam allowances around the pattern created this way. When sewing, you just make folds that remove 1 cm from both corners, and the result is a pocket with straight vertical sides.

The order of sewing is: sewing and stitching the folds in the corner, hemming the upper edge, ironing the seam allowances in the sides and bottom edge, and stitching the pocket in place. With a single color fabric, you'd use either the hem or front middle to get the pockets straight, but in this case, I used the upper edge of the lower pockets, because the pictures needed to be horizontally straight.

So now the vest has all of the outside pockets. The next step is to make the lining and the inside pocket that will be sewn into it. I'm currently in the middle of making a sample of the inside pocket, because getting the zipper in place properly is a bit tricky. Best to practice first before touching the actual lining.

Double pocket

I managed to finish the lower pockets of the vest this week. Or not quite, two corners of each pocket still need a bit of stitching, but my sewing machine isn't powerful enough to do it as there are so many layers of fabric there. So that'll have to wait until I get to the school's sewing machine on Monday.

The structure of the pocket is such that there are two pockets in one. A flat one in front and a bit deeper one behind it. Here you can see the almost finished pocket. The front pocket is accessed from the top, under the flap, and the back pocket through the opening on the side that has a zipper.

I'm giving here the basic instructions, explaining the order of things, but not all details, because a lot depends on the thickness of the fabrics you're using. I had to do some tweaking in the corners to minimize the layers of fabric, but with different kinds of fabrics, those things probably would not have been necessary. 

To begin with, you need two identical parts for the pocket, one made of the outside fabric, another made of the lining fabric. Turn the upper edge of the outer part and sew it. At this stage, the inner part should be 1 cm (seam allowance) higher than the outer part.

Sew the pieces together with a narrow strip of the lining fabric in between (this part can be seen from the outside when accessing the zipper pocket). The original vest had black lining, which looked the same on both sides, but in my version it took some thought to figure out which way the lining fabric used inside the pocket should be facing. When sewing the vertical seam that attaches the pieces together here, the inner and outer parts should have the right side facing up with the inner part on top of the outer part, while the strip in between them should be the right side down. Lay the pieces flat, turn the strip on top of the inner part, turn the edge of the strip under and stitch near the edge.

The next step is to sew the zipper. It should be entirely under the edge of the fabric, so it stays out of sight. It needs to be sewn with the right side of the outer part facing up, so you're basically going blind, but it is fairly easy to feel the zipper underneath. You just need to be very careful, if you're using a metal zipper, so you don't break the needle when sewing the horizontal part at the bottom. Here you can also see how the narrow strip in the previous picture shows to the outside.

The next step is the side of the back pocket. Sew it in place, turn the right side out, iron flat and stitch near the edge. Note that when you're stitching the upper corner, you need to first turn the seam allowance of the inner part as shown in the picture.

Turn and iron the seam allowances of the other edge. Draw the shape of the pocket to the fabric to which you're sewing the pocket, so you get the edges of the side to the correct place (to get the curved parts identical in both pockets), and sew the pocket in place. Start with the zipper, then the upper edge (the lining fabric, this is why the inner part needs the seam allowance to go 1 cm above the upper edge of the outer part) and finally the edges of the side piece. Stitch the corners neat and flat.

To get the pockets straight, you can either measure from the bottom edge or the vertical middle, but in this case, I used the fabric patterns, because anything else would have looked strange.

The very final part will be to add buttons, but that also requires machines I only have access to at school, so it'll be done later.

Housecoat/dress made of old flannel shirts

I had some old flannel shirts that had belonged to my dad. They were too big for me, so I decided to make something else out of them. As a starting point, I took a dress called "Lankku" (Plank) by Nanso. It's a good fit for me and very comfortable, so I used it to make patterns out of what was left of the old duvet cover.

There was no way to cut entire pieces out of the flannel, so I divided the pattern into pieces and then cut pieces of flannel as shown in the next picture. These pieces took two shirts to make, so I knew at this point that I'd have to use the third one as well.

I combined the pieces by overlapping the edges and using a stitch that's meant for this kind of combining. The main thing I wanted was for the garment to be comfortable, so regular seams were out of the question.

When all these seams were ready, I used strips of colorful fabrics to cover them. It made the result neater, and it was also more fun to have some cute pictures as the flannel colors were a bit dull.

I used the third shirt for the sleeves and edges. Cutting usable parts of that shirt was a bit tricky as it had some paint stains, but I managed to avoid having any stains visible. I made huge pockets for this as they need to accommodate a mobile phone and all sorts of other stuff I carry around at home. (I don't expect to wear this when going out, unless it's just quickly taking the trash out.)

The last stage was sewing buttons and button holes. I remember sewing a couple of button holes with my old sewing machine, but not buttons (I don't think it had that function). Now I decided to try doing both using my current sewing machine.

This is the foot for sewing button holes. You put the button on the back where it defines the size of the button hole, and the machine makes the button hole automatically. I made 8 perfect button holes, and then the last one (closest to the hem) got messed up somehow. I removed the stitches for that one and decided that 8 buttons was enough.

Then it was time for the buttons. The instructions in the user guide were clear enough, and the next photo shows the first ever button I have sewn using a sewing machine. I wanted to practice first on a separate piece of fabric in case I mess it up, but it wasn't that hard, you just need to be careful in positioning the button.

So this ended up being the first piece of clothing with buttons that I have ever made without any hand sewing, all done with the sewing machine.

Here is the finished dress. The breast pockets are from the flannel shirts. For the white/grey one, I cut the shirt so that I'd get the pocket in the correct place. The other pocket is from the third shirt, and I cut it out of that one and sewed in place to this.

Apron (because pockets!)

 I've been using skirts more than usual as I'm home all the time, except for grocery shopping. The biggest problem with skirts is no pockets. I'm making a dress/housecoat with big pockets, so I decided to use the same pocket pattern for making an apron with huge pockets.

It's just a rectangular piece of fabric with gathered upper edge and a waistband and pockets made of different fabric. 

I'm also starting again to post in the Fashion Doll Shoes blog, starting with some projects done between 2015 and now. I have posted some of these to Instagram, but it's nice to have one post per project, collecting all stages together.