Burda 9501 – Another Story of Sewing Success!

As promised, here are the details (and photos) of my girls wool winter coats. You can find my son’s coat post here.

I started with Burda 9501, I just loved the photo on the pattern envelope. As with my son’s coat, it is made of wool coating, underlined with cotton flannel and lined with satin charmeuse.

This pattern is pretty good, it was my first time sewing a Burda pattern. I thought the instructions were a little vague in a few spots (as is the general consensus regarding Burda instructions I hear) but I’ve been sewing for a long time, so I figured it out.

The only alteration I made was adding length to the sleeves. I did construct it just a little differently than instructed, both on the pockets and the lining. Ha, it’s funny now that I think of it. I opted to hand sew the pockets on, but changed the order of construction on the lining in order to eliminate hand sewing. I’m not a fan of sewing by hand, but every now and than, when it really warrants it, I will sew something by hand.

Can you believe they are twins? Ha ha, every time I photograph them, the “Little One” gets so much taller than the “Wild One”.

OK, back to the coats. I really like how they turned out! The only difficult part was the collar. I think it is overall, just a little too small, it should have been a little wider to allow more to roll and lay nicely. I also really really regret not cutting the under collar just a little smaller than the top collar to help the seam to roll to the underside. It took a lot of steaming and molding to get them to behave as well as they do. Here are a few close ups:

I cut them the same size, based on the measurements of the bigger of the two girls. It fits really well around both of them and is just a little long on the smaller girl, hence the rolled up sleeves. While I would like them to make it to next year, I just know they are going to grow too much for that to be true. Sigh, I’ll just have to make them new coats next year. :)

This was a big project! They day after the last coat was finished, I felt a little lost in my sewing room. I wasn’t sure what to work on! That quickly ended and I made two things for my son and started work on a new dress design for the girls.

But I learned a lot about coat making.

- It’s not that hard. Just a little more detail and more time consuming, but not necessarily harder than other garment sewing. So if you’ve never made a coat before, give it a try!

- I love working with wool, it really does sew and press unbelievably well.

- Wool apparently doesn’t shrink as much as I thought it would when pre-treated. I over bought in yardage to account for shrinking when I steamed it before cutting. I think I ordered 1 yard extra, and I was really afraid I under bought and would be short. Well, I received almost a full yard MORE than what I ordered when it arrived in the  mail, and as mentioned, it didn’t shrink as much as I anticipated it would. In the end, I still have 3 and a half yards of this beautiful wool coating. And that means…. Momma’s getting a new wool coat too!!!

But not right now, I’m tired of coat making! It was fun to be sure, but I’m ready for some instant gratification sewing.