Getting ready

The pattern arrived today, and what a nice presentation! It's a little booklet, with clear instructions and lots of illustrations, room for notes (yay!) and the multisized pattern tissue. Sadly, I struck out at Jomar (well, for coat fabric ... I did get some other stuff!), so I'm off to order the wool online. Holding off on lining for now; I haven't seen anything fun enough, and maybe Gertie will have some suggestions on fabric or sources. In the meantime, while I'm waiting, I might tackle those Jalie 2908 jeans ...

Grey ladies and Lady Grey

Gertie is hosting a coat sewalong, and in a moment of insanity I signed up. My sewing room is so crammed with projects and projects-to-be that it's getting tough to walk in there, and the beagle has taken to napping in the doorway for lack of enough floor space anywhere else.

But I digress. Thanks to a generous former coworker, I now have a lovely stash of wool fabric. Eventually this will be three sets of plaid or houndstooth jackets with coordinating solid dress pants, just the thing for the office on cold winter days. The length of royal blue and red English houndstooth is going to be a dressy coat, based on a 1940s pattern I saw but was too cheap to pay $55 for (so I'm going to adapt a pattern I already own). Bottom line: I need to bone up on the few tailoring techniques I know and learn some new ones. And since I found Gertie's blog while searching the Internet for "tips on how to make a coat," joining the coat sewalong just seems like karma.

The sewalong pattern is the Lady Grey wrap coat from Colette Patterns, and I'm counting on the giant peplum (flare, whatever) to hide the middle-aged spread. (The grey-haired lady sews Lady Grey, lol.) I decided to look for a red wool--son's school colors are red and black, and I already have two black coats. Well, I have a red fleece jacket, too, but it's not as chic as the Lady Grey will be ... and I might as well try to look chic at some of the early-season marching band events, before it gets so cold that I just give up and wrap myself in blankets, scarves, and hats with ear flaps.

So the pattern is ordered and now it's time to find fabric. The selection at Jo-Ann is "meh" and makes me long for the days when we had 4 or 5 great fabric stores within 10 miles of the house, and they stocked more fabric than crafty stuff. I've seen something I like online, but am going to make a road trip to Jomar Fabrics before committing. Depending on how fast Gertie paces us, this coat may not be done before marching band season ends, but there will be three more seasons after this one. Gulp.