Hello! I made a new thing. It’s sort of a jacket, sort of a coat. What’s the difference between those two things anyway, I wonder? I always thought a jacket was short, like maybe no longer than hip length max, and a coat is longer, like anything past the hip. This pattern is marketed as a jacket, but also as potentially a shirt-dress, and the two variations are called duster and blazer respectively; so I guess you can take your pick! A multi-faceted design, to be sure!
Whichever, it’s unlined so a very simple and quick thing to make as far as jackets go, and the boxy unfitted shape makes for an undemanding fitting process too. Oh, maybe I should mention the name of the pattern; this is the new Blair jacket pattern by Homer and Howell, and I made the duster length.
I really enjoyed making this! you normally think of jackets/coats/dusters as being quite involved but this was really easy. Even considering that I chose to bind all the raw edges inside with HongKong binding, which is a process that when you’re about to embark on it you think; oh this is going to take FOREVER… But since I figured the seam allowances were going to show every single time the coat blew open I wanted everything to look neat and tidy inside. And whenever I do get going with HongKong seaming I invariably love it, end up thinking, oh this is FAB!! and why don’t I do this for ALL the things I make, hmmm??
My fabric is a wool-blend suiting that I’ve had in my stash for years and years; so long I cannot even remember who gave it to me. Because, yes; it was donated to me from someone else’s stash once upon a time. I think maybe my grandmother’s? It’s beautiful quality, but I’d always shied away from using it because I thought the colour was absolutely terrible for me.
However right now I’m trying to be more resourceful and use le stash, stay in my house and avoid shopping as much as possible. You know, isolation and all that … so decided what the heck. That’s why dyes were invented, right? I knew the fabric wasn’t 100%wool, but it was worth a try. Sploonch! it went, straight into a navy blue dye-bath.
This actually worked out pretty well… it’s now a lovely shade of … bruise?? ok maybe I’d describe it as smokey blue, or even light teal.. anyway it’s a richly smudge-y sort of a colour that I really like and a big improvement on the original light sky-blue. For the HongKong seaming I used an olive green poplin from my stash too.
Buttons! well obviously I had nothing that matched in size or colour AT ALL and normally I’d pop off to the shops to search for something. But see I’d made up my mind to work from my stash, and giving in on the buttons would be such a fail… so fresh on the heels of making my tea-cup for the bridal shower hat, I thought I’d try to make some from modelling clay. I think they worked out really well!
I don’t think I’ll be tossing the coat in the washing machine any time soon, just in case, although I’m sure they would probably survive fine. Maybe just a gentle hand-wash. But look at them! I LOVE them! I especially love how slightly wonky they are. Of course any and all wonkiness was completely intentional 😉
I’m just going to briefly mention the changes I made to the pattern:
I switched the orientation of the box pleat in the back to be an “innie” rather than an “outie”
I added a hanging loop inside the collar/yoke seam
I put in BIG inseam pockets into the side seams. Yes, there are now pockets in the Blair pattern, but I was a tester for this pattern and they weren’t in the original design. I NEED pockets in a coat! so I actually went in with the seam ripper and added some in after I’d finished the coat completely.
Here’s a little video on the making of this coat, now up on my YouTube channel… I’d like to say that the quality of my videos is improving, but I still haven’t worked out how to even add music. I feel like such a youtube failure! but it’s such a lot to even get this out. I’m trying to improve!
Anyway, blogging/vlogging fails aside; the final verdict is that I’m going to love wearing this… coats are not an awfully common sight here in Perth, we’re so ridiculously casual here, to a fault! But I really love coats, both the making and the wearing of them; and I really love looking at pictures of Northern hemisphere bloggers wearing coats regularly that I’m going to just do it anyway. This is one of those things that is kinda un-Perth, even though I’m deeply Perth in just about every way. This is weird, but it’s just the way it is 🙂
Details:
Coat; the blair jacket pattern byHomer and Howells, in a wool mix suiting
Dress; the Cissy dress pattern by Homer and Howells in a rust coloured lace, underlined with pink/rust dyed cotton, details here
Tights; my own design, black stretch stuff, details here
Black shoes; my own design and made by me, details here
Floral dress; based upon Simplicity 8658, floral cotton gauze, details here
White shoes; designed and made by me, details here
Well, hello there gorgeous! I’m thrilled to introduce Ms Summer to the world! the latest in my small set of seasonal girlies…
Of course she has cute little lace knickers too, with an embroidered rosebud on the front…
I perused Le Stash, and my hand fell on some lovely garden-green raw silk, mainly because I knew I had a matching zip in my zip stash already too. The green silk turned out to be a pair of trousers, that Mum herself had originally give to me to use for fabric sometime. She’d originally bought them in Italy, while on holiday, and got many years of good use out of them. It occurred to me I could make a really good little project bag, utilising the trousers’ existing welt pockets and waistband… bonus that this lovely fabric is boomeranging its way back to Mum in a new, and newly useful form. Full circle! I selected some brushed tartan cotton for the bags’s lining, and inserted a new zip underneath the waistband facing inside, along with a wrist strap, so she can have the bag hanging from her wrist and still knit from it. I think the really interesting thing about the bag though is the accessories; I added three little tabs inside, two with swivel clips, to which I attached a pair of scissors, and a pack of wool needles, and the third has a D-ring to which I’ve sewn a tape measure. I left the original back welt pockets intact on the outside (above), so she can tuck small extra things into those pockets, things she might not want to go rattling around the inside of the bag.
Pride of place of course goes to Mum’s skirt… 
a fully hand-embroidered and hand stitched Alabama Chanin skirt; with embroidery in the reverse appliqué method, and using the four panelled, mid length skirt pattern from the book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design by Natalie Chanin. The cotton jersey fabrics were originally white and Mum dyed them herself in two different shades of grey and blue. Mum traced and cut the stencil design June’s Spring from p116 in the book herself, enlarging by 300% as recommended, (
When snipping out the motifs she carefully left a very narrow border of the cream stencil round each one.
A month or so ago Mum mentioned how she specifically wanted an unobtrusive, very plain white top to wear with this skirt so I offered to run one up for her… I chose the Esme top pattern from Lotta Jansdotter’s book Everyday Style and a slubby plain white cotton from Fabulous Fabrics. I measured Mum all over, secretly storing the measurements away for future use, mwahahaha… no one gets away from the handmade in my family!! and drew the pattern so as to custom fit it or Mum’s measurements. Instead of the neckline facings I finished the neckline with a bias cut strip, because I think it’s a much nicer and neater finish for a neckline edge. Mum wants to know how to do this herself so I’ve promised to write a tutorial sometime.
