Ninja Busy...

Okay,

So I admit it's been a while since my last post. I have however been making my coat...slooooowwwly and behind the veil of the blog. I have now completed the lining after buying a walking foot and I'll be honest, it was a mission.

1. I chose a teal which I personally feels is a good colour combo with any browns. I wanted colour but not so much it would own the coat rather than the coat owning the colour. Is that street lingo? I'm not cool enough to know.
2. Obviously I used the same pattern as the outer layer which I had adjusted to suit my shortass frame.
3. Put the darts into the lining only as I could sense the trying to put them into the wadding would result in a great deal of tears and yelling.
4. My new machine has a better overlocking stitch, so even though I don't yet possess an overlocker I managed to control the fraying before it went mental. Why is it that some fabrics fray if you look at them?
5. After sewing together in the easy standard way of this pattern I used a the lining as a pattern to cut out the mahoosive wadding. Obviously I have 2 layers of the teal lining too as it would be anoying to get wadding coming through the outer fabric of my coat.
6. As you can see, cutting huge lengths of fabric is really the only benefit of laminate flooring (laminate will be this generation's Artex). I tacked the wadding between the lining pieces VERY thoroughly as I didn't want any movement at all.
7. Now this is the devil bit. It was a wee bit of a nightmare to drag the wadded lining back and forth through the machine to get the swirly-whirly effect I was after. And it was exercise. This is why this lining has taken so long really, as I have to keep stopping and starting so I didn't get mad and impatient with it.
8. Ah, the pelt of some weird animal...I do love my swirls, though it does look very poofy at this stage.

I didn't want to look like a 1920s Dappy from N-Dubz (if you are from another country and don't know who this is, be thankful. Ignorance in this case truly is bliss) NAd as you can see the coat lining does stick out a bit like something created by Issey Miyake. And whilst I find his designs inspiring and innovative, I live in Ramsbottom, where it would look even more quirky than I am comfortable with (and I like a lot of quirk).

After much consideration, googling and questioning of costumier friends, I decided my best bet for relaxing the wadding was the following course of actions:

• Washing on a cool setting with fabric conditioner and white wine vinegar
• Ironing it (I did thorough test samples, which I always advise) which flattens the wadding and makes it bend easier
• Sitting on it, rolling in it etc.

Already I'm seeing some improvements and I'm sure that once I have weighed it down at the back as instructed in the pattern and tamed by the outer fabric, it will be reet.

Next time, the embellishment on the back....