Reconstruction: Linen dress not quite as good as the original garment, but much more useful

 Doesn't the Lady Grey Colette coat adaptation look lovely under the Jacaranda in this photo? I was half pleased with myself when I made this (ulp) 11 or so years ago, and I had a very interesting and in retrospect, enjoyable time making it, albiet with some slightly burdensome fitting woes.

However, I have never worn it, other than in the photo shoot. A very poor outcome for some lovely linen fabric and a lot of work. It has languished in my wardrobe, because frankly, it is the wrong type of garment for the subtropical climate where I live. It is too hot for autumn and spring, being fully lined with Imperial batiste,  ridiculously too hot for summer, and not warm enough for our very brief, but chilly, winter mornings and evenings. Despite this, I had great difficulty in setting scissors to it, despite several attempts over the past few years. I become attached to my projects.

2022, I decided, was time to Woman up and do something about this.

Naturally, I stuffed this up fairly spectacularly.

 

I used an op-shop find pattern, Kwik Sew 2255 as a starting point for the planned transformation from shoulder line princess double breasted coat to princess line frock.

 I had never used this pattern, but for some strange reason, did not make a toile, despite nearly always having to adjust patterns. Instead, maybe thinking that I only needed the general shape of the neckline, I merely traced out the front  and back bodice pattern pieces and merrily chopped away at the front of the coat to approximate the top edges of the front and back bodice pattern. I clearly need to go back to first principles with my sewing, because when I held up the massacred garment to myself, the neckline was unable to cover the salient sections of my bra.

You may have guessed that this experience did not encourage me to go forward with the project. In fact I think the coat  spent more than 3 months lying on my sewing table whilst I moved on to more immediately gratifying projects. 

However, after I'd made a few little smocked baby garments, my not-very-latent smocking addiction was looking for new targets. I thought that a smocked insert would satisfy my embroidery urges, and possibly rescue the garment from the too-depressing-to-finish pile. ( This pile usually finds it way fairly quickly to the rag bag, but the beautiful linen was resisting this move).

The smocking was great fun. I did show some embellishment restraint, and smocked the fabric in the closest shade of DMC stranded embroidery thread that I could find for some pretense at subtlety.

 I then had to work out how to attach these smocked sections to the neckline. 

 I carefully hand basted, then machine stitched the smocked sections to fill in the bodice, serenditously finding that I could slightly gather the top edge using the holding stitches from the pleating to encourage the neckline to sit nicely against the body. This was a little fiddly, but I was pleased with the end result.I then attached the back piece of the dress, and piped the neckline for stability.

 

Originally I had intended to keep the coat lining, and make a lined dress, but decided that this made the dress too warm to wear. Instead I drafted a deep facing from the original collar of the dress. This facing extends down the entire front of the dress, and I was able to reuse the interfacing from the coat for this purpose. I bound the facing with a constrast bias binding, as there were not enough scraps from the coat to make a self fabric trim.The only trouble with removing the lining is that I was unable to improve the seam finishing for the back seam of the coat, which orginially was pinked, then topstitched. The photograph was taken after I had worn and washed the dress, and some fraying is occurring.

I shortened the sleeves of the dress, mended the unavoidable left over buttonhole from the double breasted coat fastening at the waistline, and found some suitable buttons from my stash.

On starting to make buttonholes I realised that my forward planning skills have become very rusty. The smocked section is thick, mobile, and not suitable for a buttonhole. Oops.

I made a thread loop, oversewn with buttonhole stitch, and this works quite well for fastening the very top of the bodice.

The dress is not as well constructed as the coat, and despite my best intentions I cannot stop noticing the mended waistline buttonhole,  but I feel very comfortable (and thrifty) in this dress and  have already worn it multiple times.

 

Now I am feeling inspired to make something impractical and frivolous.

 

Lady Grey in Brown velvet. Would you take this pattern?

I have finished the second, and final Lady Grey coat. It has taken me all of January, because I did a lot of hand tailoring. This was probably unwise, seeing that cotton velvet is not particularly amenable to tailoring techniques, but I had fun trying. Putting it off until January also allows me to submit it to
Gigi's JAM (jacket a month) challenge at Stitchers' Guild. Procrastination can be a good thing.
See this thread for the pros and cons of hand tailoring cotton velvet.
See these bad, blurry photos.



These are all you are getting. It is far too hot to put on a coat like this at the moment. Only the very windy day allowed these photographs to be taken early this morning (note, I do not plan to wear this coat over a sundress in normal circumstances - the shoes however, I think are perfect with the coat).
I like this coat more than my linen version. I took a lot more trouble with it. There are still some very annoying issues, but I am not beating myself up about them. I have not sewn with this fabric before, nor have I hand tailored a coat before.
I particularly liked using Kenneth King's Cool Couture book in the making of this coat. The aspects I have not yet posted about include:
1.the internal, ribbon welt pocket

(the placement of this allows items in the pocket to sit just above the waist, not over the bust, but meant I had to sew the internal buttons on through only the inside of the pocket, sort of fiddly)
2: The no-pad shoulder pads, made from layers of hair canvas.




This may have been my favourite part of making the coat. They curve so nicely all by themselves!
3. The hem interfaced with a bias strip of wool melton.



I was quite pleased with how I gently gathered the hem using the melton bias,until I saw how puffy the hem was. I assume Kenneth King is talking about this effect when he describes "thickness" and "soft fold". I am not sure if I like it, or maybe I have just stuffed it up - quite likely really.
4. The use of bias cut wool to gather the sleeve head - extra wide in Kenneth King's variation to help pad out the top of the sleeve.

Other things I really enjoy are the sand washed silk lining, the hand dyed cotton lace trim for the lining (cherries and a tea bag in boiling water, I felt most clever), and the secret embroidery on the inside.

The butterfly is reinforcing the back pleat, and the flower is disguising the part where I cleverly clipped a hole in the fabric instead of the seam.
If I wear this coat, it will be a bonus.

I have finished with Lady Grey now. The pattern is lightly used (I traced it and folded it back up with the original folds as best I could).
As it is rather a pricey pattern, I hate to see it just sitting around. It has already come across the Pacific by airmail, so if anyone in Australia or New Zealand could use it, I would be very happy to pass it on. If you would like it leave me a comment and an email or blog contact so that I can collect your address.

Edited to fix links

Lady Flood

This is a sewing blog, so first I will talk about sewing.
Inspired by local difficulties, I naturally worked on a complicated project. This was a nice distraction. I do not think there would have been quite so much tailor basting and catch stitching of seam allowances had there been power, internet access, mail deliveries and telephone services more often over the past week.



This project is Lady Grey Mark 2. I have progressed quite well through my initial plans of applying hair canvas to the fronts, and undercollar, pad stitching the lapels and undercollar, catchstitching the roll line, adding an internal welt pocket, but have come unstuck on the collar.
I hand basted an interlining of cotton flannel to the upper collar (I knew I kept those scraps from making nappies for a good reason), following the advice of Kenneth King in Cool Couture. This apparently gives a rich and luxurious hand to the velvet (totally worth keeping those scraps for the past 7 years...).

Unfortunately, I think my velvet must be a bit too closely related to corduroy, as it just seems to make the collar bulky. I did remove all the hair canvas and flannel from the seam allowances.
I pinned the collar to the neckline to allow for turn of cloth (following the advice of my tailoring book) but after sewing it, there is a puffy sort of look.





Apparently topstitching velvet is henious sewing behaviour, my books are rather scathing. Despite this, I tried a little topstitching by hand, with silk thread,(the left collar in the photo above) but this did not reduce the heniousness - the topstitching did not look good at all. Back to the seam ripper. Do you think Lady Grey would look any good as a collarless coat?
Thank you for the many kind messages concerning the Queensland and NSW floods. It did get worse here before it got better.

We now have most utilities restored, and the roads to Brisbane were opened yesterday, so I was able to retrieve my stranded children, much to everyone's relief. There is even sunshine today.

Lady Grey. The Jacaranda Coat Version

On one level, I am very pleased with this coat. It is my trial version, after 2 whole toiles, and 4 collar and sleeve toiles, of the Lady Grey Coat. It is not a bad fit. I was inspired to make a purple version by the Jacarandas, a linen version by Sham's fabulous artistic linen denim coat (Linen can work as a coat, an A- Ha moment), and a long version by Tanits-Isis' long and glamorous coat (although I should have considered that the long and glamorous figure that enhanced this coat was not something I could replicate). I am very pleased with the photographs of the coat with the Jacarandas.

I love the buttons and the colour.

On another level, I am very unhappy with this coat. I even have fabric use remorse. I love this linen (Michael's Fabrics), which has been imagined as dozens of different, fabulous outfits during its sojourn in my stash, and there are only scraps left. I am not going to detail my dis-satisfactions, which are, objectively, minor. Robin wrote in this post that sewing is the perfect hobby for a perfectionist. I was trying to remember a perfect sewn project of my own, and could not. I think the curse of perfectionism may be the root cause of sew-itis. It probably also makes you work towards becoming better at sewing.
My next coat will be better.


I will probably not wear this coat often. I frequently need to sternly remind myself that many of the sewing blogs I read originate from temperate or dreadfully cold climates. This coat is a lot warmer than I expected, despite being made from linen and lined with poly-cotton batiste.


My thoughts of wearing it as a spring or autumn coat-dress are impractical. I did not use tailoring techniques, other than applying stay tape to the roll line. It looks fine without using tailoring IMO, although I think it would look more expensive had I used piping in the collar and facing seams rather than topstitching. I was hoping to wear it occasionally before I make my velvet coat, to check wearability issues, but I don't think this will happen before next winter. Maybe it will grow on me. It is just that the coat in my head was so much better than the one that is now in my wardrobe.
I need to make something easy!