March – First Blooms

This Lepanthes took to the terrarium in no time and is a constant bloomer. This orchid is about the size of a half dollar. In the lower left there is a Barbosella orbicularis that is establishing itself on the ledge with varying degrees of success, and a Neoregelia pauciflora sending off another pup across the 55 gallon terrarium. I have […]

Pockets

Before assembling the full coat, do all of the pockets. This is for a multitude of reasons that all come down to it is just so much simpler. You don’t have to fight the entire coat at the sewing machine or (theoretically) stitch through another layer of your coat (never have had that happen… hah!). I decided to get the […]

Change of Pace

Once the pad stitching was complete (okay mostly I just needed a break from it), I moved on to other sections of the coat. I started with the patch pocket flaps. I used fusible canvas for these and cut the canvas 1/8″ shy of the seam allowance to allow for a crisper edge when rolling the seam under. Once fused, […]

Shaping

The domette arrived!  I cut a generous piece for each side (about 2-3 inches larger than the chest reinforcement) to work in some of it as fullness while still being able to cover the prickly edges of the hair canvas.  Domette is a thin piece of lofty cotton fiber (think a cross between flannel and quilt batting only much thinner).  […]

Coat Structure… and waiting

Some shipping times are extended because of COVID-19, so although everything has shipped, some items are taking longer to arrive and there were 2 mixups with the hair canvas.  I ordered sew-in and they shipped fusible.  I do not want to use fusible on the major sections of this coat, so I ordered from another company and I again received […]

Carlton Coat Preparation and Cutting

I had spent a few weeks looking for the right wool for the coat and narrowed in on an olive/forest green wool blend tweed.  This was my first time working with tweed, and the preparation of the buttonholes loomed already on my mind.  I chose to do bound buttonholes on this coat as it will afford a little more material […]

And so it begins…

I’ve been working on a number of projects, one of which is the Carlton Coat from over at freesewing.org. I started on the project about 5 weeks ago, beginning with research and finding the right materials for the coat. I wanted to help the project by creating instructions for making the coat. I also started to look around at some […]