Coat

Dinosaur Dog Coat

Doggy coat for warmth

My dad just got a tiny little dog thing, but I’ve been told that it’s regularly quite cold. So in order to help the creature feel more comfortable outside, I was asked to make him a little coat. I looked online for a pattern and found one from Wholefully. Apparently commenters weren’t always super happy with it, but I decided to give it a try anyway.

Since my dad and Timmy (the dog) live quite a ways away, the dog was measured by Cathelijne and then I made the coat from some other leftover fabric I still had laying around. For the outside, I used the scraps of my first dinosaur coat, in hopes that it would also provide some protection from the wind and rain. For the inside, I found some fleece for extra warmth.

I put in the measurements and drew out the pattern on some paper, then placed it on my fabric where it happened to fit perfectly on the tiny bit that I had left. As this is the third thing made from that dinosaur fabric, it’s been used more than expected. For the closures, some Velcro was attached to the front flaps and the tummy flaps. I lined the Velcro bits with some extra dinosaur to prevent it from sticking to the fleece. Lastly, a hole was added in the back for the leash to go through.

The whole thing was snail-mailed and unfortunately the tummy flaps were a little bit too short. I seem to remember that it fits when Timmy is wearing the coat by itself, but not when he’s also wearing the harness. So I’ve made some notes on the pattern so that if I were to made it again, I can add some length to the tummy flaps. Cathelijne has made a Velcro solution to make it fit now.

Dinosaur Momiji

Manipulating origami dinosaurs into a new winter coat.

After breaking yet another coat zipper and clearly not learning my lesson, I set out to make myself a replacement Dinosaur Coat. I’d fallen in love with the Momiji walking jacket from Waffle Patterns and desperately needed one with dinosaurs on it. So the internet was scoured again for dinosaur printed softshell fabric and I landed on some from Takoy. I wasn’t fully sure what the colours would turn out to be, but when it arrived on my doorstep I really liked it. Off to the haberdashery for some new zippers! I tried to line up the dinosaurs so they went around the entire coat and almost matched along the zipper. That seemed to work out quite well.

The pattern works in such a way that you pick the elements that you want to include and follow the relevant instructions for those. I chose to use A: Hood, C: Chest pocket, E: Kangaroo pocket + hand warmer and H: Knit cuff. There are only four adaptations from the original pattern, I think. One is to have larger eyelets on the hood because the ones that were the right size just kept coming loose. The second was to do the pleat on the front pocket to the outside instead of the inside, mainly because I couldn’t find a way to have the dinosaurs show nicely with the inside pleat. Three, add some elastic to the inside of the chest pocket to keep my wallet in place, because I didn’t measure it beforehand. And lastly, to add a hanging loop to the inside when attaching the lining hood to the neckline.

The coat is lined with some fairly thick and smooth orange-y fabric that was a close enough colour match to the outside dinosaurs. The pattern comes with separate pieces for the lining. All in all, I’m very impressed with the pattern. The pieces all match up and the instructions all made sense and were very clear. While the project wasn’t even that difficult, it did take me a fairly long time to complete. That was mainly because I was very unsure on how long to make the sleeves. So the two pieces of the project sat on the back of a chair and on the couch for weeks before I decided to just follow the pattern and make nice long sleeves.

There are a few things I would do differently, if I make it again. The first is are to decrease the height of the hood. It’s too big, so I have to scrunch it down a whole lot for it to stay on my head. Second, the pocket opening for the hand warmer pockets is too far down, which means that I never feel secure in putting something else in there as it would probably fall out. The outside pocket pleat also means that if I put stuff in there, I get a massive tummy, but I guess that was all my choice. Lastly, the zipper doesn’t really comfortably close all the way up so it generally ends where the hood attaches to the neckline. The first time I wore the coat, I wasn’t convinced. But it’s been in stable rotation for weeks now and I really love it.

Yellow Summer Coat

Making a light, bright summer coat that will hopefully protect against the rain.

I’ve wanted a thin but water and windproof summer jacket for a while now. I never really found the right fabric so it never really happened. But then I ruined my dinosaur coat with an ironing mishap and started looking for replacement dinosaur softshell fabric. On that same website (Takoy.nl), I discovered something called ‘summer softshell’. They told me that it was a light, breathable but waterproof fabric. I chose the mango yellow version. Since it was softshell, I also hoped it wouldn’t fray and I ordered enough to make the Susan jacket from Pattydoo again. This was the same pattern as I used for the original dinosaur coat.

This new jacket is not identical to the first coat that I made. For one, I decided to not include the zip-on hood. It’s now attached with only snaps which seems to be working fine. Since it would be a summer coat, I didn’t include the knit cuffs but I did include the sleeve adjusters. Third adaptation was to change the pockets. The reason the dinosaur coat died was because I tried to patch the pocket with an iron-on patch and then accidentally melted the zipper. I always wanted to stuff more into the pockets than they could realistically hold. I figured the solution for this was the create more space in the back of the pocket such that the front and back of the pocket weren’t exactly the same size; limited by the width of the center front coat panel. The back of the pocket now has a pleat on it so it can expand and not rip, hopefully. It seems to work so far.

Sewing this was quite smooth sailing. The fabric was very well behaved. I did use very thin pins because normal pins refused to go through. The only thing that really required unpicking was the bottom of the sleeves. In my infinite wisdom, I’d forgotten to read through the original post where I mentioned taking 3.5 cm of the bottom of the sleeves and these new ones were full length. I’d already put on the velcro for the sleeve adjusters all the way at the start, so that had to come off and be reattached 3.5 cm higher. I have now marked that change on the pattern just in case I sew it again. Since just yellow would make for a somewhat boring coat, I put in a contrast zipper. I then also added contrast binding the certain sections of the inside to make it a little more fun. I’ve worn this coat a fair few times now and it’s nice. We’ve been experiencing a little bit of a drought recently, so I haven’t tested it in heavy rain yet. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will hold up!

Dinosaur Coat Version 0.86

Making a tiny dinosaur coat for a little human.

I still had about a meter of my dinosaur coat softshell fabric left and really wanted to use it for something useful. Luckily, friends of mine have produced a little human and I decided that he needed a dinosaur coat too. The pattern used was a free one called Schnabelinas Softshelljacke that came in sizes 74-146 and three different versions. I chose size 86 and the ‘Gerade Teilung’. Yes, this pattern was in German. However, I managed it because it has extensive instructions with photography and google translate was a great help. I also made my life a little easier by not putting in pockets.

This Gerade Teilung has straight seams at the front instead of the curved ones from the other versions. The pattern gives the option for a short and a long version – I chose long. There is also a possibility to remove the shoulder seam by creating a back pass (?), so that happened too. The sewing went pretty smoothly apart from the finishing. The snaps in the hood were not having it at all. So I think this is no longer a removable hood, unless you want to pull the snaps off too.

I really like the zipper guard that’s made from a contrasting fabric (blue with white dots). I chose to use a separating zipper and put in dark blue cuffs. It’s a bit big for the recipient but he’ll likely still grow, probably a lot faster than I ever did! It feels nice that the fabric went to a lovely new home where it will be used instead of staying in my hoard languishing forever, as so many lengths are currently doing.

Come Rain, Come Dinosaurs!

When the world still doesn’t think adults should wear dinosaurs, you make it yourself!

I finally, finally (!), managed to cut into the most expensive fabric that I’ve ever bought a long length of. This softshell fabric with dinosaurs has been hiding in my hoard since September 13, 2017 when I bought it at the Stoffenspektakel in Goes. The 13th of September 2020 was coincidentally the day that I started cutting out a new rain/fall coat. I only found this out when I went looking for the date when I bought the fabric and was pleasantly surprised.

On to the coat. The pattern is the Pattydoo Susan with optional add-ons of a concealed zipper in the hood and cuffs. One teeny, tiny problem with this pattern is that it is in German. My German is nearly non-existent. Why choose this pattern then? Well 1. Because it’s awesome and only 3 euro (HOW?!). 2. Google Translate exists and 3. They made an instruction video in which they show all the steps (still in German though). I hoped that with the video, I’d manage to figure out how to make this thing. So about 296 replays on – I kept repeating every second sentence they said to figure out what to do – and I have my coat!

Finished inside neckline and hanging loop, neck protection and hood snaps, concealed neck zipper, double sided zipper.

I’ve never made as many trips to sewing stores as I have done for this coat. That’s partially because I kept forgetting that I should bring the fabric if I wanted to colour match. I’ve gone for thread, and then for elastics, and then for velcro and then for zippers, and for more zippers and for cuffs and for the adjuster-things on the hood.. Let’s just say that the local shops must be fed up with me and my stupid German project. Anyway, once I’d gathered most of my materials, I had to start cutting into my precious fabric *Gollum noises*.

Hood with adjusters, hood back adjustment strap, concealed zipper and pieced center hood piece.

Once I had nearly all pieces cut out, I had about a meter of fabric with both selvages left. However, I also had a pattern piece that would need to go lengthwise and therefore would steal a further 40 ish centimeters from that rectangle, just by itself. For some reason I couldn’t bear the thought of cutting into my pristine fabric and therefore cut it from a bit that was too small. My hood thus has two extra seams in the top where I pieced the ‘Kapuzenstreifen’ together. It’s not noticeable at all, so I’m quite happy with this solution. Next to the hood thing, I only made minor changes to the pattern. These include a hacky swayback adjustment (taking in the back seams from armpit to waist by a up to 2 cm) and shortening the sleeves by 3.5 cm or so. Apart from that, I pretty much followed the movies exactly.

Pocket opening, pocket inside and sleeve cuffs.

While the pattern has pockets, they are quite shallow, so I can’t stuff them full of whatever my heart desires. This is unfortunatly a feature of the pattern since the pockets are set in the side front seam and extend to center front, which isn’t very far. However, the way they have you sew them in is ingenous. There’s a built in zipper and it is automatically concealed. I also really love the concealed zip at the neck so you can remove the hood. This version is much nicer than the one I cobbled together on my red coat.

All in all, I enjoyed working on the project. The cutting and sewing stage only took three days, but the gathering of materials and taping the pattern together added another couple of hours. I seamripped maybe three bits in total? The pattern itself is completely glorious in its markings that all fit together absolutely perfectly. I’d already bought another Pattydoo pattern for a sweater that may be jumping ahead in the queue a little. For now, I’ll just continue to swan about in my dinosaur coat and be quite proud of myself for finishing this thing!

Red Coat

At some point in the past, I bought between 4 and 5 meters of some thick red fabric. Vaguely wool-esque, but probably mostly poly-something. I’d planned to make a coat out of it, and some time in November, I finally started on the project.

I found the pattern in Knipmode 9-2019, pattern 15 – Robe Manteau. It was never going to be that simple though. Changes and alterations would be needed. First, it was going to be shorter than the original pattern, mainly because I’m short. Next, the neckline was going to be altered dramatically, because I’m always cold and therefore having such an open neck was not an option. I settled on this type of neckline, and used the scale model to figure out how to make my own collar. Cue pieces of paper stuck to other pieces and pins everywhere! I also wanted a hood and stole the pattern from Simplicity Naaimode 14 model 51 (also known as Simplicity 2056) but reduced in height.

It took me forever to decide on all of this, and then I started with an old tablecloth to see if the pattern even fit me. It did, mostly. The only change to the original was in the back center seam, where I took out a lot at the top and added some in around the waist; and reduced the length of course. Then I started cutting out the outside and the waterproof and stitched them together around the outsides on almost all pieces. The only ones where I varied that were the center fronts, where I didn’t want to have 5 million layers, so I settled on using the waterproof as lining, and the pocket flaps.

The pockets are lined with the super soft white plaid fabric used for poppys. That was the start of the project. Then loads of pushing really heavy fabric through my sewing machine to sew the outside together. Once the outside was complete (apart from the hem), I needed to puzzle the lining together. The lining was an off-cut of fabric with white flowers, teal and red. There were practically no left-overs once I finished cutting out the lining.

The lining was hand sewn in because it was just easier than trying to wrangle 26 kilos of fabric under my machine (perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, but you get the drift). The zipper is two way, the hood can be detached with another zipper and it’s got elastic pulls. I’m quite fond of it, even though it started pilling about 10 seconds after I first put it on. We’ll see how damaged it gets over the course of this winter. The fun thing about a new coat is that I have an excuse to make new hats and scarves, so expect some black knitting in my future.

*large exhale* It’s done!

That coat, it’s finally done. I’ve decided I don’t mind the crookedness (it’s really crooked, the shoulder stuff I think didn’t help). It’s ridiculously warm, I almost melted out of it while taking the pictures. I think it’s only going to be for the really cold part of winter, otherwise I’m too warm.

A lot of pressing, sewing, cutting, hand sewing and button-hole making later, I have myself a coat. It went from this to this to this:

I’m not going to say much more. It’s done, I can put it away since it seems to finally become spring and I don’t have to worry about it! One more finished object!

Coat update

Yes, another update can be made on the coat. After ripping it all out again, since I was not happy with having the interlining as a second layer and feeling it was extra bulky. I took it all out and treated the outerfabric and interlining as one. Yes, I know I should have done that from the start, but hey, I’m not so fantastic at this and mistakes are what you learn from, right?

Anyway, before sewing the thing together I figured I’d make the pockets differently, since I was not happy with them in the first iteration. I now had my heart set on slanted, middle-of-the-side-front-panel-pockets, with a zipper and a thingy over the top. I didn’t really know how to do this, but I figured it would be sort of similar to making bound buttonholes. Admittedly, before this coat, I’d never done those before.

However, I figured that they would make the coat more “work”-proof. If I’m going to graduate this summer, I need to do job interviews this fall and possibly winter, and I need a coat that isn’t made for children and has pretend paint spatters all over it. Yes, it’s true, I wear a children’s ski jacket at present, and I love it, even though it’s not very professional.

So I set about re-finding the tutorial for bound buttonholes that I was sure I’d seen somewhere on the 100 blogs/comics I follow. I did find it and used it to make very nice buttonholes (this tutorial). If I do say so myself.

(5 of these)

I did do it a bit different since I couldn’t get the folds to be equal so I just sewed a line of basting stitches to get it to close and then press it and sew the sides to the little flappy bits (yes, this probably makes no sense).

Anyways, following the first couple of steps, I sewed around a long rectangle a little smaller than my zipper, proceeded to cut it like >—< so, and then sewed the end of the zipper right side on right side to the bottom triangle. Folded the whole shebang inside, lined the edges of the zippers and long sides of the box together, sewed along that and pressed. I had to hand do the top, since my zippers were too long and I hadn’t figured out how to keep it closed and sew it at once. But it worked!

I then also attached the pocket bits to this contraption, aligning them such that they would lay flay and sewed that one. I only had to reposition one once, which is a vast improvement on my normal pocket skills (read, at least 5 attempts are needed). Then I sewed the flap on it, and hand stitched the sides. The flap was done! Then I had to put the thing together again. From the first iteration I learned that there was practically no waist and I looked like a Michelin man. So I put all but the underarm and side seams together and then pinned the side seams to my liking. That’s why the right seam next to the pocket is nice and flat and the left one all ugly and puckery. It’s not actually sewn yet. Still pins in there.

However, I seems I am making progress on this project. Hopefully it’s done soon!

Coat cuffs

Although I am supposed to be very busy with school, I have decided that I should not do any work after say 11 or 11:30 at night. It’s just too late and it won’t work. Therefore, I started making the cuffs for my coat yesterday. I knitted some inner cuffs that won’t show on the outside, but should keep my wrists warm and covered, and prevent the wind from flying up my sleeve. They are very simple, just 34 stitches on 20 or so rows, knitted flat and attached together. I used a ‘drunken German cast on’ (using this site) to keep them stretchy, and another stretchy bind off (from this movie) to keep them stretchy on the other side. Not very interesting, but there is progress!

I also unpicked my pockets because I decided I want them somewhere else, since it didn’t feel right before. I also want zippers in them (don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I’ll figure that out later). Hopefully, I will have my coat done by Monday and I can wear it for the remainder of the winter. Hopefully!

Wish me luck on that one (and the mass of homework still to do). Good luck crafting too!

Coat progress

My coat has taken a spot on the back burner. School is getting in the way, and there is so much yet to do that it is starting to be really daunting. Before I felt like that I did do some work in it. It’s been cut out (the outer fabric and a form of interlining of which I’m not sure yet how to put it in) and the outer fabric has been sewn -> without the interlining, a slight miscalculation. Now I have to solve that, but there isn’t really time to think about it right now.

While I was cutting out the coat, my dad thought it would be a fantastic picture moment. This may have been because I did not want to use pins and therefore took all the mugs and bowls from my parents cupboard to put on the tissue as pattern weights. Our pottery (can I call it that?) collection is fairly.. colourful, so it made a nice picture as evidenced below:

I also made a fairly large length of bias tape from the orange stuff (here), and although it didn’t really go as planned (there was a lot of cursing involved), I can now probably salvage a long enough length for it to work. The project is now in a laundry bin in its entirety and I’m afraid it will stay there for a while. School comes first.