Bring on the Cold!

I’m in coat making mode! I’ve been planning wool dress coats for all three of my kids over the past few weeks, but my girls needed play coats and fast. It’s getting cold out there! So I thought it would be good to work on a couple of play coats as a warm up to the big coat project I’m planning.

I started with McCalls 5743 which is an unlined fleece jacket/coat, I’ve had this pattern in my stash for more than a year. I actually started to make it last fall, but abandoned the project as it just wasn’t what I was hoping for at the time. This year I found success though!!

I definitely wanted a lined coat, so after tons and tons of fiddling with the pattern pieces, I was able to draft a jacket front lining that worked with the front facing. This is what the assembled lining looked like before it was bagged with the outer coat.

Excuse the messy sewing room floor – I completely tore my sewing room apart last weekend and rearranged everything and it’s not really all put together again yet!

Anyway, I was excited to bag a lining (which I’ve never done before!) and it turned out great!! It’s one of those things I could never understand when reading about it online, but once I did it in real life, it was a piece of cake! Even the sleeves are perfect. Though this may not be the most tailored application of it, I’m glad I got to accomplish this a couple times before starting on the wool coats.

I used a Cuddle Fleece (or Flurr as I’ve recently seen it called – a mix of Fleece and Fur) from Hancock, the lining is a crepe back satin and it is underlined with a 100% cotton quilt batting. It gets cold here in MN, so I wanted to make sure it would be warm enough to last the whole winter. The cuddle fleece was crazy to work with! It shed EVERYWHERE! At the raw edges, not when finished. My sewing machine handled it well, but the pile was so thick that I would actually loose pins in it! The only down side is that the gathering detail around the yoke in the front and back is pretty much lost with the thickness of the fleece. But it’s soooooo soft and cozy, so that makes up for it!

My other big design change was to elasticize the hood. I wanted it to be snug around their little faces to keep the cold wind out. I cut four of the pattern hood piece (instead of just two per the instructions) and stitched them RST at the indicated fold line. Then I stitched again 5/8” from the edge to form a casing and inserted 1/4” elastic. I added the elastic and then placed the hood on one the girls heads and pulled until it fit snugly to get the right length on the elastic. Worked like a charm!

The buttons, as cute and perfectly coordinating as they are, are just for show. I used large sew on snaps for the closers. I just didn’t feel like attempting button holes through this fleece!

The girls love them!! They fit really well, they are a little big, which was intentional, cuz these girls grow like weeds.

Excuse the iPod, it was the only way to keep a willing subject for photos!

Goofy girls!

Check out my pattern review here and be sure to check back here on Monday for a giveaway! Now excuse me while I go de-fuzz my sewing room….