Thrifty Thursday

I've had this jacket in my line up of free patterns for a while. Although the weather has not changed, fall and winter are fast approaching, so rather than put it off, I thought I would go ahead and get it together.
The jacket is an unlined jacket meant to be made out of boiled wool or a heavy weight knit. You can find the free downloadable pattern here.

The instructions are in the December/January issue of Sew News. Back copies are available here. There is a print version as well as a digital version available. The instructions really aren't necessary for this coat, but the magazine has so many wonderful projects, so you might want to go ahead an order one if you do not already have one. Click here and you can see the other projects that are available in this issue.

Here's my coat. I had a piece of wool that I have wanted to felt, so I decided that this would be the perfect project.Sadly, I did not take a picture of the wool prior to felting.

A little note about felting wool, especially a piece this light in color. If there is any lint in your washing machine, it will get caught in the fabric as you can see below. I was able to pick this out of my fabric, but it does take a little time. Also, I have a front loading washer. I set the dial on the hottest setting and the highest spin. It took 3 tries to get the fabric to where I wanted it to be. So felting is possible in a front loader, it just takes a little longer than it would in a regular washing machine. One last note, your fabric will shrink considerably. This fabric was 60" wide and by the time I finished, it was 42" wide, so keep that in mind if you decide to do this.

The only change I made to the pattern was to enlarge the sleeve. The sleeve on the model looked to be rather close fitting and I want this jacket to easily slide over a bulkier garment without being too tight. My picture is not as clear as I would have liked for it to be, so hopefully my explanation will be enough. To enlarge the sleeve, I drew a line from one armpit to the other. Off of that line, I squared a line to the hem of the sleeve which gave me a straight sleeve rather than the tapered sleeve that comes with the pattern. I also wanted a cuff, so I added 2". My arms are rather short, so if you decide that you would like a cuff, please compare your arm length measurement to the length of the sleeve pattern prior to cutting the sleeve.

The seam allowances are 1/8". Rather than sew a normal straight seam, I zigzagged all of my seam allowances. The foot was put right along the edge of the fabric.

Just to give you an idea of how long the jacket is on me, here's a very bad picture. Look closely and you'll see my pajama pants :)

The collar is quite pretty. I had initially thought that I would round off the edges, but once I got it together, I rather liked the square corners and how they drape over the sleeves.

This is only pinned in place, but I also decided to create a tie closure. Since the wool will no longer ravel, I cut strips for the ties. I played around with a frog which I think I'll enhance. 

There are 3 pieces to the pattern, front, back and sleeve. The coat takes absolutely no time to sew. There's the center back seam for the collar, the shoulder and neck seam, the sleeves are set in and then the side seams sewn. Voila, your finished. Since the wool has been felted, there's no need to finish the edges. After I got the coat together, I initially thought that I might bind the edges, but once I started playing around with the frog, I decided to cover the collar and the cuffs with passementerie similar to this coat that I did some time ago.  I plan to make the passementerie out of strips that I cut from the  leftover fabric.

Since I'm going to embellish the coat, you'll see it again once I've finished. I think it is going to be such fun!
This is a great coat pattern that is easy to put together, fits well and could also be lengthened into a dress length coat. If you do decide to put one together for yourself, one last note, there is a small dart that is intended to help the collar lay in place. I did not use it as I didn't think it was necessary.