Velvet coat – almost finished…

Butterick 5266

Not the greatest photo ever – the combination of black velvet and a dark Shed is not the best – but I think you can see the progress on this coat! It has a body now, which is a big improvement on last week’s cape and sleeves. It’s still not quite finished – the hem needs, well, hemming, and it needs front fastenings of some kind. It also needs overlocking around the sleeves, and a jolly good pressing around the collar.

(Before anybody says anything, yes, I know the purple lining doesn’t go with the red outfit underneath. I wasn’t about to go out and buy another five metres of lining when I already had this purple in the stash.)

The saving grace of this project has been its simplicity. If it had been more complicated, there would probably be a lot more swear words in this post. As it is, I simply left out most of the tricky parts to make my life easier. The sleeves will be overlocked to the body instead of slip stitched. The fronts and neck and sleeve hems are topstitched rather than understitched. Where the lining came out a quarter of an inch bigger than the coat (at the sleeve heads and the hem, don’t ask me why!), I simply chopped off the difference and stopped worrying about it. I haven’t bothered with the fourteen metres of braided trim, or the openings in the front panels. Oh, and I left out the side seam vents too. Simple!

Having moaned on about the frustrating parts, I will concede that the sleeve heads eased into place beautifully, as did the collar. I’m now deciding how I want the front to fasten, and whether I’m going to add any kind of trimmings at all. I think I might need at least a little bit of detail on the ends of the collar, to make them stand out against the front a bit more. Paul’s suggested black frog fasteners and sequin trims, and I think he might be right.

Oh, and the poster in the frame, behind the dressform? That’s a little idea we had, that we’re hoping to turn into a reality!

5 thoughts on “Velvet coat – almost finished…”

    1. Thank you! Don’t worry, you’ll be sick of hearing about the poster soon enough. 😉 It’s for a project that we’re exploring later in the year. 🙂

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