black stewart tartan coat

Oh my gosh, I love this new coat so much! I’ve been in the process of making this for quite a long time now. It’s been a sort of long term, high quality sort of a project, squeezing little bursts of sewing in between making raincoat toiles… so many raincoat toiles… and finessing the grading of a raglan sleeve. For a raincoat, natch. Making this coat has been “fun” simply because just simply following a pattern already written for me feels like a holiday by comparison.

I got this fabric from Minerva, and it’s GORGEOUS. So gorgeous in fact, that when it arrived I just kinda froze, creatively speaking. You know when you’re so terrified of ruining the fabric you can hardly bare to even take the scissors to it? I couldn’t settle upon a project for a while. Finally, I decided a coat was really the only worthy choice. I frolicked amongst the coat options in Le Pattern Stash, and finally settled upon this one I’d used before, Vogue 1537. My first version of this was for Tim and Kelly’s wedding! and I really really love that one too!

I even did the double welt buttonholes again too; they were just a tad more challenging in this thicker, felt-like fabric, but the challenge was actually quite enjoyable.

During the cutting out, I was initially going to go with the super strict, thou-absolutely-MUST pattern match or else thou shalt be cast out from the sewing community, never to darken that doorstep again, thing; which I personally have definitely been a part of, no judgement for that. However, at some point I just decided I didn’t want to do that this time. I wanted something more creative. So I re-assessed and cut the side panels on the bias, and the pocket flaps and under-sleeves, and recut the pockets.

Fortunately I had enough leftover that I could do this! and I was able to cut some of the smaller pieces from some of the old, bigger pieces to make this happen. In the final coat, nothing “matches” in the traditional sense, although everything IS symmetrical, at least!

I bought deep petrol blue lining from Fabulous Fabrics; which is not a colour that appears anywhere in the tartan but interestingly looks absolutely perfect with it, imo.

I also bought dark blue buttons from Fabulous Fabrics. They were a nice blue, and had a lovely surface design on them too, but I eventually decided they were completely the wrong blue. So I painted them with black enamel paint, which I’ve previously used to blacken shoe soles, etc. Now I think they look amazing!

These photos – in fact, this coat! – are kinda funny/bittersweet for me to think back on now, because this coat is the last thing, and these are the last blog photos I took in our old house… the one we’ve lived in for the past 17 years. A bit sad, but I love our new house so much and am really excited to make it our home! I’ve been re-homing LOTS of stuff so we can fit into it… our old house was a five bedroom, three bathroom family house, and out new one is a three bedroom, two bathroom. Quite a difference! and I’ve made the downsizing process much harder for myself, by filling up each of the children’s wardrobes with stuff as they’ve left home and vacated their rooms. I kinda had the attitude, well I have the storage space, so I may as well use it! Bad policy… because now I’ve had to be extremely ruthless in streamlining all our things.

Also weird because I lavished such a lot of care and attention on this coat and it was such a HUGE project for me time wise, I’ve run out of things to say about it… hmmm, strange! So I guess I should just stop rambling. In short though, I really really love it! I honestly think it could be the best coat I’ve ever made!