Finally Autumn has arrived and I’ve jumped into coat making – Paulinealice Quart coat.

I hope you’ve already read Sewmanju’s Quart Coat review. Or maybe Claire’s review. There are a bunch of great Quart Coats around now. Beth’s reviews have lots of good.

Paulinealice Quart Coat is certainly distinctive and requires good sewing skills to achieve but she’s done the leg work with her pattern pieces (separate lining pieces with wiggle room) and since the Quart Coat was launched last year, Pauline has developed a few more distinct styles from this pattern.

Did you see her biker jacket version? She’s such a helpful designer that Pauline has posted a ‘how to‘ so you can create your own biker jacket version.

Pitt Trading
The first Autumn fabric haul at Pitt Trading was too good to ignore and coats are something I adore making because of the work that goes into them. Each coat extends my sewing skills – or at least that’s what motivates me to keep making coats and jackets. Thank you again Pitt Trading for these fabrics and notions.

If you’re looking at planning posts, Sewmanju, Claire and Beth have great posts to learn from.

Dualling coats
I did test this pattern on some navy wool fabric I purchased in New York two years ago. Let me clarify this. I wanted to test and practice bound buttonholes, the pleats, check the centre back seam and following the sleeve zipper instructions correctly on the real version. 

The test navy coat

I do make a lot of mistakes and my handy unpicker saved me on a number of occasions as I wanted to get the stitching right. Having a test coat prepped at the same time as the real coat let me relax a bit when I started working on the ‘real’ fabric. So I was sewing ‘in parallel’.

Once I had constructed the sleeves and bound buttonholes I got stuck into the real coat. The real fabric from Pitt Trading was much easier to work with. There are lines in the weave so I used this as an additional sewing guide.

Bound buttonholes
The technique Pauline suggests is easy to follow. You can make this coat without bound buttonholes but I decided to include these. After practising on the navy test version, my bound buttonholes became more accurate. Both fabrics had varying thicknesses and movement so when I sewed machine buttonholes on the epaulets, they were a welcome relief. Making bound buttonholes means I have to be accurate (#anxiety) and hand stitch them closed (#sorefingers). 

Swayback adjustment
On the pattern, the centre back is cut on the fold. To cater for my sway back, I’ve created a centre back seam to follow my curve ie no fabric pooling. Yay.

Epaulets
I love epaulets. I added a longer epaulet to the centre back waist as an additional military feature. Pauline suggests using the lining as the underside of the epaulets. I did this on the grey version but I used a lighter weight dark purple for the navy version.

Pleating
On the test version, the pleats threw me. They have to point to the back so by the time I made them with the real fabric, they worked out.
The ironing press made these pleats a whole lot sharper. I’ll be using the old ironing press again for a future pleated project #hint.
As Beth did, I initially sewed the lining onto the pleats and then I took them off.

Petite change
The only change was to make the pocket bag shallower, but still keeping the bag part, if that makes sense. 
I left the coat length, sleeve length and collar width as is. When is frightfully cold, this coat style is going to come into it’s own. 

The main part I focused on was getting the shoulder positioning and kept the lengths as is.

Excuse my ‘zipper in sleeve’ joy.

Zippers
Any jacket with zippers on the sleeves has me at ‘hello’. 
I collect unusual zippers and buckles because they can be difficult to get when you actually need them. These zips were just what I needed for the navy version.
Pitt Trading provided me with their zippers for the grey version.

Navy coat lining.

Lining and trims
Let’s just say, great colours under a dark cover keeps me motivated.

The fabric used for the grey version wasn’t lining fabric but when I saw it on the shop floor at Pitt Trading both Sylvia and I loved it as lining.

Hems

Thank you Pitt Trading for providing the fabrics and notions for my grey coat. Their new website is being filled with fabric every week.
Pauline’s done it again with a lovely and unique coat pattern.