Commission in Progress - Red Coat

Well, the red military coat is slowly coming together. This project has definitely been a learning experience. The entire thing was patterned and cut out in about 2 hours Monday night, and then I spent another hour starting to sew it together and work the seams. The pattern required some minor adjustments as it's loosely based off a Simplicity costuming pattern for Neo's coat from the Matrix. It's been shortened to just below the knee, and a lot of the extra "Floaty" fabric taken out.

Based on the costume from Zulu Wars, the idea is a final piece somewhat resembling this: 

I've had to simplify the sleeve design some, as flat stitching cording onto the sleeve proved rather daunting. The entire coat is cut out of duck-weight red cotton, and the sleeve is black linen along the cuff attached with a satin stitch. Next time I do something like this, I'll use a light weight interfacing as there's a little puckering, but that should be able to be ironed out and lay flat once it's lined. So far, the sleeve is like so....

The patterning on the decals are slightly different, but the idea was to get the same look without killing myself on time spent. The thick band is a piece of trim, zig-zag stitched down, and the twist cording at the bottom is piping cord, also free stitched down. I think I'm going to add one more band of the cording above the loop at the elbow, and call the sleeves good.

The second piece that is completed is the collar, and ready to be attached to the garment. It's black linen, red cotton duck, and a liner of stabilizer in between. It's worked together with edge piping, as I discovered a nifty way to do that, and then the trim was flat stitched on top. 

The collar looks huge, but it's for a man that is bigger than me, and should fit pretty nicely when it's worked together. I tested fit on my boyfriend and it looks much more proportional on him! 

As for attaching piping, I found a great resource online at http://www.designsponge.com/2010/06/sewing-101-piping.html

It outlines a step by step. You start by attaching the piping the "wrong way" to the OUTSIDE of the garment.

Clipping corners as necessary to go around curves, you then stitch with a zipper foot as close to the piping as possible along the outside edge. 

This leaves a line on the back side of the garment where the stitches are. Lay the other piece, insides to insides, over top of the stitching. Align the edges, flip everything over, and sew down the same stitch line you made attaching the piping. When it's all attached and you flip it right side out, voila, beautiful clean piping. 

Tonight I'm taking a break from sewing and going to my first Zumba class. If I'm not too tired when I get home, I'll be working on sewing together and attaching the liner to this thing ;-)

~E.