Over the weekend I managed to get lots of sewing done, mainly because I was Billy no mates with the house to myself for the whole weekend and it was certainly too cold and miserable to venture into the garden! I had a lovely time in my sewing room 🙂

I decided to make a coatigan. It’s a pattern by Schnittchen, called Coatigan Sylvia, it’s like a cardigan styled coat, warm and cosy and easy to wear. I had the perfect fabric for it, a gorgeous tweed which I won from Minerva Fabrics at the Sew Up North meet up. It looks like a Linton Tweed type of fabric, it’s that sort of loose woven with lots of colours. The background in chocolatey brown with amber highlights, which wouldn’t usually be my colour choice, but interwoven is lots of blues, greens, teals…it’s gorgeous!

As it’s such a loose weave I decided to apply a light-weight fusible woven interfacing to all the pieces before I started sewing. I was glad I did as I’m sure otherwise I would have had problems. It was a very light weight so it didn’t add any structure, just stopped it from stretching in the wrong places. I did a flying visit into Leeds on Saturday morning (I was back in Otley by 10.30!) and chose some lining fabric at Fletchers in Leeds market, they have a good selection of patterned linings which I was very tempted by, until I saw some teal polyester mock silk! I put it next to the fabric and it just popped! (I know, I’m sounding like a quilter!!) I just love the colour peeping out from inside 🙂

The design has integral pockets in the cross-seam of the jacket front. I decided to do the bottom half of the front with the fabric direction the other way. It doesn’t stand out quite as much as I hoped but I like the effect.

The jacket went together really easily. I’ve not used Schnittchen patterns before, they are printed on lovely heavy paper and I did appreciate the fact that separate pattern pieces were given for all the lining pieces, rather than using the same piece with ‘cut here for lining’. It was a bit like using a Vogue pattern in that way!! Seam allowances are 1cm, it seems pretty usually with indie patterns but I must admit I do prefer a 1.5cm seam, apart from the fact that with the big 4 all using 1.5cm it’s what I naturally stitch, but also with a friable fabric such as this it doesn’t give much leeway for fraying.

The instructions are adequate but minimalist, there are no diagrams or pictures although they do mention on line tutorials for all their patterns. I think to make it up from just the instructions you do need to basically know what you are doing. The only thing I  deviated from the instructions on was stitching in the lining and the hemming. The sleeves and the main coat were hemmed as you went a long, so sleeves were actually hemmed before they were stitched into the coat. I prefer to hem everything at the end just to make sure it’s the length I want. I let it hang overnight and stitched it up by hand with a herringbone stitch.

The lining should have been attached by ‘bagging it’, so the coat is stitched to the lining all the way round and then turned through a gap left in a sleeve, I’ve never tried this method, you do have to be confident that your lining is exactly the right length for the coat, otherwise it won’t hang right. I chickened out, I stitched the lining in on the machine apart from the hems, I could then check it hung ok and hand stitch along. For those who like to see the inside, here it is…

Size wise, I decided to go mainly on my hip size as that’s usually the bigger size, (classic English Pear shape!!) I cut out a size 42 and it’s a good fit, it is a loose fitting coat but it feels right. I love my new coat, it’s very cosy to wear, the pattern calls for one big feature button on the front, I did buy one on Saturday but it doesn’t look right so I think a trip to Duttons for Buttons is in order. I’m tempted to get three smaller buttons instead.

My sewing this weekend covers two challenges in one make; it was one of the patterns I chose for #2017 make nine, a challenge by Rochelle New to make nine items . I’ve also recently discovered the Dressmakers Bloggers Network on facebook and their challenge this month was ‘Keep it Cosy’, this is definitely cosy!