Dress Coats – Lots o’ Prep and Cutting

I’ve started work on my big coat project and it is already a lot of fun! All of my materials and the Oliver + S pattern arrived last week. Here are the details.

All three coats are being made of the same materials, just for the sake of simplicity. I order a black wool coating that is 95% wool and 5% nylon. I am interlining all three coats with 100% cotton flannel for some added warmth. The lining is a 100% polyester Satin Charmeuse, also in black. I haven’t yet decided on my interfacing yet, I have to test a few out and see which works the best with my wool.

Over the weekend I prepped the wool and flannel. The flannel, simply by washing and drying twice to preshrink. The wool I preshrunk using the dryer method, which worked out very well. My piece was 7.25 yards and I did not want to cut it into sections before preshrinking it. So at first tossed my yardage in the dryer with two wet towels and ran it on high for 40 minutes. But it didn’t seem to shrink much, so I laid the whole piece out on my kitchen floor and sprayed it down with a water bottle, making sure the entire surface was good and damp/wet and then put it in the dryer again for another 40 minutes.

Here’s a sample of the wool I cut after using the dryer method. Both pieces are exactly 3” x 3”. One I steamed to death with my iron, the other I left alone, then I compared to ensure that they dryer method really did steam/shrink all my yardage completely. I’d say it worked, as both samples are still exactly 3” x 3”!

Saturday I started cutting out the Burda pattern for the girls coats, because I had that one traced already. I have both coats cut out of the wool and most of the interlining. Just a little more cutting to go. But I think tracing and cutting is the most tedious and time consuming part of sewing. While I’m at it, I think I’ll trace off and cut my boy’s coat now and get all of the cutting over with at once.

The other exciting piece of this project is the size tags I found on Etsy this weekend!!! I’ve been searching for a place to buy size tags that didn’t require a 1000 tag minimum of just one size. I sew a lot, but I will not sew 1000 garments in size 4. But I found this Etsy shop and I ordered 100 tags in a combination of sizes from 4 to 7 and in a few different colors. I cannot wait for these to arrive, I’ll definitely post again about what they are like once I see them in person.

So that’s that on the coat front. The girls’ play coats are fantastic now after a week of wear. They are really warm and cozy.

I also decided (about two seconds after reading the post) to enter the So You Think You Can Sew contest over at Mommy by Day, Crafter By Night. It sounds like lots of fun!! I entered my yellow jacket project.

That’s what I’ve had going on this week. Amidst the coat project, I  do have a half finished dress for the girls that is an original design. I’m going to try to get that finished up this week and possibly even get a tutorial up for it.