A few weeks ago I bought a Colette pattern – the albion jacket/coat with the intention of making it for my hubby. As we sewers do, I spents hours some time looking on the net for ideas. I couldn’t believe how many versions there were out there for ladies. This caused me to think that I didn’t want my hubby thinking I was making him a jacket as a practice run for mine, so I decided to make one for myself first!
I had some cotton herrinbone twill in my stash, which I bought when I was in Cornwall in August 2013. Perfect!
I bought the accompanying ebook Companion from The Coletterie to help me along, and I soon had all my pieces cut out and a narrow shoulder adjustment made. (I don’t have narrow shoulders, but I made a one armed muslin and decided I needed to loose a good inch due to it being a man’s pattern.)
I even made all my own bias trim!! I didn’t go for the continuous method. I just did it in strips, which worked out ok as I never needed to join 2 strips together as there wasn’t any need for any extra long pieces of bias.
One of the first things I did was to practice flat felled seams as they were a feature on the front of the jacket so had to be spot on.
Well, try as I might, I couldn’t get them to look good enough for the front. They’d be passable for the seam on the hood but not on the front.
I decided to see what a trim of the shell fabric would look like, and sewed it like you would when you add piping but without the cord. I was super duper pleased with the effect!
The jacket (I was making the short version with inseam pocket and no patch pockets) came together really easy. I loved every minute of sewing this. Even finishing all the raw edges with bias trim, it just gave a dull coloured coat the WOW factor!
I had 2 disasters though whilst making the jacket.
No 1 Disaster
Whilst trimming the seam allowance at the head of the sleeve I accidentally snipped into the sleeve!!! ARRRRHHHHHH!
I almost cried. It almost became a UFO.
I didn’t have any fabric left to cut another sleeve. I pinch together the sleeve head and pinned but I lost too much length off the sleeve and it looked daft.
That’s all for now folks! Didn’t want to write too long a post, so tune in next time to see how I overcame this mini disaster, and also how this jacket became my most expensive garment ever owned (with the exception of my wedding dress!).
T H I M B E R L I N A 
Ugh, I shouldn’t be telling, but my sister purchased a bathing suit and was cutting out the tag and snipped a big hole in it. I repaired it, but it did look pinched at that spot! It happens!
Whoops! And no spare fabric if its RTW!
You could have made the hole bigger (depending where it was!) and made a feature out of it! Lol 😃
That would have worked! We would have just had to cut a hole in the other side to match!!
Cliffhanger blog post….
Haha..hopefully I’ll be able to write the finale in my break later today 😃
I have slipped with the seam ripper a few times and had to patch holes but it is so disheartening 😦 I can’t wait to see what you did with this. It looks like it is coming along quite nicely. Hope to see pics of your bias trim on the raw edges 🙂
In the end i was goad it happened as the ‘fixed’ sleeve looks better than the other!
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