Penelope Coat, part 1

Let me start off with materials.

The purple is sportswear twill, which is a heavier fabric good for coats, but not the wool blend I wanted. You just can't find wool blends in attractive colors. I knew I should've bought it when I found it over a year ago! And then the lining is a plain cotton print. I picked it because 1) I like floral patterns, and 2) it had traces of all the colors that would be present in the coat, and I also happen to think the slight green to it really emphasizes the purple. Not that a purple and orange coat necessarily needs any extra emphasizing.

The pattern I used calls for a little over 6 yards of fabric, ostensibly of each because the lining is almost the exact same as the outer layer of the coat. This will be different depending on if you get 45" or 60" bolts of fabric and will vary if you tweak patterns like I do. I got the very last of this fabric at the store, and it  barely counted as 6 yards, so I said FUCK GRAIN LINES and just cut the pieces out however they best fit, so even though I fucked up the sleeves the first time around and had to cut them out again, I still ended up with somewhere between half a yard and a yard left of the purple fabric. So in a pinch, or if you don't know what grain lines are, you can make this coat in about 5 yards of fabric.

Upon further inspection of references, this gem popped up, you know, after I'd already bought my fabrics. But you know what? I don't really like the print they used for the lining in the movie coat. I'll take my granny floral prints any day.

The bias tape I used was carrot orange, because the regular orange looked fluorescent against the purple. I want to be able to work this coat, not blind and horrify people with it. But apparently, carrot orange is not a popular selling item. I grossly underestimated how much I would need and ended up buying some from Hancock Fabrics online, and then made my own when I was about a yard short at the very end. Let me explain.

For this coat, I needed both single fold bias tape and double fold extra wide bias tape. The double fold was for the hems - i.e., all around the bottom and edges of the collar and sleeves, and it's extra wide so that it matches the size of the single fold when I lay it out flat to sew onto the seam lines. And so the single fold was for this "decorative" trim on the seam lines - i.e., the princess seams, etc. By the very end of this coat, I was missing about a yard of double fold bias tape that would go at the very middle back of the coat along the bottom hem. So I took Quilting Tape (which is like SUPER double wide bias tape) and made my own and finished it. Like a boss. So, I think, altogether, you'd need about 3 or 4 packages of the single fold bias tape, and 3 or 4 of the double fold. Keep in mind there are 4 yards to each package of single fold, and only 3 yards to each package of double fold.

Next up: how to modify your pattern, fuck it up, and then get it right. Hopefully without too much of an incident.