Muslining it

Thanks for the words of encouragement on the coat, guys!  It's good to know that my fellow bloggers have also mourned the loss of a garment that met its untimely demise.  It's sad when you still love something but it's battered beyond repair.  So that made me extra-excited to start on my coat!

I've never made a coat before, and I am very picky about how my coats fit, so I made a muslin.  I prefer them to be really fitted, and I like my sleeves to be bracelet-length and very slim through the shoulders and upper arms.  Coats that are too big in the shoulders are the worst.  They make you look so much bigger than you really are.

So, the muslin.  It was pretty easy to put together.  I don't know why I thought making a coat would be really hard but it's sort of like a dress, just with more fabric.  I obviously skipped some steps, like, I was not going to make and topstitch a belt, which was step #1.  I also only did one pocket and one sleeve. 

Aside from being WAAAAAY too long, like a foot and a half too long, it fits real nice in the shoulders, back, and chest.  No complaints there!

 

But, the sleeves! I could probably fit my leg in there. Some major changes are going to have to happen. The armhole is too large, so I think I am going to raise that 1". Then I'm going to make the sleeve skinnier overall. I was thinking about taking a little bit out of the sleeve cap and then an inch or so on the underarm seam? I'm not too experienced in that department but it seems like there are a lot of good tutorials online for how to remove ease from a sleeve.

 

I think the sleeve changes should be easy enough and I like the way everything else fits, so I am going to proceed with the coat. Yay!