winter sewing: Rumana coat

So this may have taken me four weeks instead of two, but I finally managed to finish one of the biggest and most important things from my plan! Successfully!

I've been thinking about making a second Rumana coat for a while. I made my first one two years ago and I wear it constantly for the eight or nine months of the year it's cold enough to do so. Why a second one? Well, mostly, the colour. Don't get me wrong, it was the absolute correct choice; having a camel coat is amazing because I never have to worry if it'll look weird with any of my rainbow-spectrum dresses. But there are times, usually when I'm not well and don't have much colour in my face, when I just can't stand to see myself in beige. There have been a couple of occasions recently when I've caught sight of my reflection and thought "wow, I look really sick." So I've wanted to have a winter-appropriate coat in a colour that really suits me for when I need a bit of a lift.

This wool is obviously from my guy at Walthamstow, who told me it's ex-Karen Millen (he seems to get a lot of Karen Millen deadstock). I hadn't picked a colour until I saw this fabric, which seems ridiculous to me in retrospect because I know bright red is the colour I look the best in. This particular blue-based red is absolutely stunning - it's rich and vibrant without being overpowering and taking the coat out of the realm of something I can wear every day if I want. It's the direct opposite of beige.

The pockets are my favourite thing about this coat, and almost the entire reason I made a second Rumana rather than trying another pattern. They're huge, for one thing, and they also sit at the exact point where my hands would naturally be when I'm walking, meaning I can comfortably wander around with my hands in the pockets without it feeling weird. As someone who doesn't really like gloves very much, this has made such a difference to me.

I really wanted to have a way to tie this one closed, but I wanted it to be as unobtrusive as possible. For some reason my brain rebelled at the idea of belt loops, so what I eventually came up with was sandwiching the ties in the side back seams. They don't interrupt the line of the coat at the back, and if I want to wear it open I can just tie them up behind me, as you see above. This coat really isn't intended to close at all so the belt isn't a perfect solution, but it does what I need it to do. 

(please excuse this horrible lighting change. I had to cut this photo session short because it suddenly started raining, realised I hadn't taken any pictures of the lining, and ran back out during a brief lull to get another couple of shots. Should have recalibrated my camera, didn't.)

My one slight regret on this coat is the lining. I used this viscose I had in stash (I bought it when I was depressed and apparently thought this might be a dress I'd want to wear? Hah) and while I like the look of it, I should have used something less annoying. It managed to grow in ways I didn't notice until I was putting the hem together, and by that point I couldn't quite fix it. There are some very weird things going on around the back contour darts. Also it just isn't great as lining fabric - I had to switch it out for something slipperier at the sleeves, and I think I probably should have given up on the idea of beautifully colour matched but still contrasting lining and just got something functional. 

Overall I'm happy with this coat. It fulfils the brief of "bright and warm" and will carry me nicely into spring. I took these photos at the same time as the photos of my cape (which is a Minerva project so not going up here, but suffice to say I really don't love it) and looking back at both sets of pictures it's clear to see that the coat is perfectly fulfilling the brief I set for it. Same day, same make-up, same outfit on underneath, but my face just looks so much more alive in these. The red is doing its job, and I'm extremely grateful for it. 

Up next will be my plans for spring, which will have some room built in for me to finish most of the winter stuff as well. I actually made more this winter than the state of this blog would have you believe, but a bunch of them were Minerva projects and a bunch more weren't really worth posting about: a second plain black bodysuit, an exact remake of one of my Ruska dresses with a slightly more stable neckband, several Christmas presents, a test run of the pyjama bottoms which I didn't love but also didn't have any real issues worth discussing. I don't regret having done this rather than followed my actual plan, but I do still want the leggings and shirt and bag and I will do them, dammit! The shirt is especially important as Patrick turns 40 in less than a month and I need to have something to give him besides a pair of Carly Rae Jepsen socks (you can get those, it turns out). I'm hoping to get fabric for that this week and get started!

By Hand London Rumana coat

Fabric: Red wool from Walthamstow

Cost: £30

Pattern details: Ankle length lined, panelled coat with deep pockets and notched collar

Size: 16

Alterations: Ties added to the side back seams

Would make again/would recommend: Yes/Yes

winter sewing: Amelia jacket toile

I'm finding that the things I'm motivated to do at the moment aren't necessarily the most useful ones, but this one really is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Not only did I choose to go with a toile of a spring jacket, i.e. the thing that should have been right at the bottom of my priority list, but I also decided to make it out of the most expensive per metre fabric I own. Weird. If you were reading last year, you may remember this post where I canvassed for ideas to use up stash fabric I didn't know what to do with. I got a lot of great ideas from people, including the suggestion to turn my super-expensive fabulous quality Ray Stitch barkcloth into a cropped jacket. The second I read that, my mind was made up. I did consider making a toile before I cut into £50 worth of fabric, but the mere idea turned my brain into a full-on Kevin the Teenager because I do sort of resent this fabric. I was extremely depressed when I bought it and every time I look at it I wish I hadn't spent so much money on it. That was three and a half years ago now, and the money I spent on it is long gone. At this point the fabric either continues to sit sadly in my stash or it gets cut up and makes at least a modicum of use of itself.

Fortunately, it is not a fail! I was almost 100% convinced it would be, because expensive fabric and untested pattern I also had some doubts about (we'll get into that), but it's worked pretty well! I will definitely get some wear out of it, although I've yet to work out exactly how versatile it's going to be in terms of colour and shape.

For this fabric, which is a very loose weave and thus frays at a rate of knots, I wanted to go for a jacket pattern with a lining. The Sew Over It Amelia jacket was the accompanying pattern for an issue of the now-defunct Lisa Comfort magazine, and when it came out I remember thinking that I liked the look of the pattern but was absolutely not going to pay £14.99 for Lisa Comfort magazine. When they reduced the price to £5 to clear out their remaining stock I decided to go for it. I had fully intended to put the actual magazine straight in the recycling, but it turns out you can't do that because that's where all the instructions are. So now there is a Lisa Comfort magazine sitting in my flat for my boyfriend to periodically make fun of. Hooray.

I cut a 16, blending to a 14 in the shoulders and forearms. I didn't do a full bust adjustment but I did do a full bicep adjustment - past experience has taught me that the SOI block has very narrow sleeves. I also added a couple of inches of length, partly to compensate for my boobs but mostly because my 18 inch zip was nicer than my 16 inch zip. Turns out this was exactly the right thing to do, as this jacket is SUPER cropped. Which is good! I spend large chunks of my life looking for actually cropped jacket patterns rather than ones that hit my high hip and look like shit on me! But if you have a large bust or a long waist, take note - SUPER cropped.

The zip, incidentally, was a major annoyance for me. The notions requirements say "We recommend buying a 22-inch zip and shortening it". First of all, no. Second of all, shortening it to what? What length of zip did you draft for?? I really hate this kind of thing. This made me very concerned that they'd drafted for, say, 21.25 inches of zip or something equally unpurchasable, but I pressed on. My jacket, as I said, ended up needing an 18-inch zip after I lengthened it. To make this jacket as drafted you'd have to take six inches' worth of teeth out of the zip, possibly more if you're making a smaller size. There is just no way that a 22-inch zip is the most convenient one to purchase. They suggest it's to give you leeway to make alterations to the fit, but I'm not buying that. Who is making six inches of alterations to a cropped jacket? Aside from that, adjusting my notions based on the alterations I make is my business, not the pattern's, particularly when the pattern does not contain any instructions for adjustment. Just tell me it's a 16-inch zip and let me do my thing, yeesh. Also if you work in either metric or imperial exclusively, this pattern will be very annoying to you as it skips in between the two constantly, as only British people of a certain age can. At one point it told me to subtract 2.5cm from my 22-inch zip.

The jacket has wide elasticated cuffs and an elasticated waist, the instructions for which I did not pay attention to. I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary slipstitching in this pattern, and I rejigged the instructions until I didn't have to do any of it. The instructions for the cuff elastic in particular I found baffling; they have you leave a hole in the cuff's seam, attach the cuffs to the sleeve, go ahead and make the rest of the jacket, then insert the elastic into the hole with a safety pin, yank both free ends out and sew them together, then slipstitch the hole closed. I just sewed the cuff, sewed the elastic, put one inside the other and carried on. This is how I did the cuffs on my Minoru jacket, which are basically identical to the ones on this pattern, and I do not understand why you'd do the stupid slipstitching method when this is easier, faster, and gives you a cleaner result.

(It's my very strongly held opinion that commercial patterns should try and avoid hand sewing wherever possible; I'm all for people going full steam ahead on the couture techniques if that's enjoyable for them, but neat and secure hand sewing is actually really difficult and requires being taught properly. A lot of my earlier projects had a much shorter shelf life than they could have because nobody told me you could attach lining to zip tape by machine.)

One thing I did like about the construction is that it's very easy to fit as you go. I've made jackets before where you have to get quite a long way in before you can see if the size is right, but on this one you have a vest with a working zip very early on in the process, so you can take in or let out as necessary. (The instructions say to make up each lining piece after the corresponding main piece, but that interrupts my flow so I just put the whole lining together at the point when I needed it. If you are following the recommended method the zip will be a slightly later point in the process.) I didn't need to alter anything, but was very glad to have opted for the full bicep adjustment.

I also really like that the lining includes a facing, so I can wear the jacket halfway unzipped as I prefer without having to worry about lining co-ordination.

Other things to note: the sleeve heads have to be gathered to fit the armscye, which is not my favourite detail; the pattern does not come with pockets; and the instructions needed a little bit more work. They aren't terrible or unusable, but the photos aren't that helpful and the bullet points are all on top of each other with no line spacing. Also, I don't feel there's enough information in the instructions to justify the sheer amount of them. In this format I'm actually pro lots of instructions - generally the people making a pattern from Lisa Comfort magazine aren't going to have a wealth of expert knowledge at their fingertips, and with that much space I would have liked to see explanations of things there isn't normally space for in instruction leaflets, like attaching the cuffs by machine (here you go). As it was, a huge chunk of the bullet points were dedicated to attaching the waistband, and it just doesn't need that.

I'm not generally this critical of a pattern that produced an end result I liked, and I've gone through my review several times wondering if I should take stuff out or soften things a bit. However, if I were a reader considering this pattern, all of these things are things I would want to know about in advance. Having read these things, I might still go on and make this jacket (it's hard to find cropped jacket patterns and they're the only jacket patterns I'm interested in) and I would have a much less annoying time as a result. My main problem, I think, is that I didn't really enjoy the process of this one, and so it's harder to find joyful words. I'm hopeful that when they do release this pattern as a main line SOI one, they'll redo the instructions and maybe even some of the techniques, leaving a much better pattern for other people to have a much better experience with. 

I will almost certainly not make this a second time, though I may try and mash it up with an unlined jacket at some point in the future. 

(Things were happening through the window. I apologise.)

I'm not exactly sure what will be up next. My sewing area has sprung a ceiling leak AGAIN so if they decide to fix it properly this time I will be out of commission for a little bit while they cut large holes over the Gnome's head. Also I saw Cats at the weekend and frankly I'm having trouble thinking about anything else. But something else will be coming soon, as soon as my flat and my brain are straightened out a bit! 

Sew Over It Amelia jacket

Fabric: Organic printed barkcloth from Ray Stitch

Cost: £50

Pattern details: Fully lined cropped bomber jacket with flat collar, zip front and elasticated waistband and cuffs

Size: 16 (14 shoulders and sleeves below the elbow)

Alterations: Lengthened by 1.5 inches, 1 inch full bicep adjustment

Would make again/would recommend: No/No

winter sewing: McCalls 6713

Hands up who's surprised that the thing I motivated myself to sew was the fancy velvet dress?

I finished this dress over a week ago, got up the next morning with the full intention of taking photos and making a post... and then got hit with a random vomiting bug that left me in an unphotographable state until two days ago. Merry Christmas to me, indeed. 

As I mentioned in my planning post, this pattern was intended to be my first ever velvet dress. The velvet I had at the time was this ridiculous extra-long-pile cheap stuff that shed all over me like an overenthusiastic husky as soon as I touched it and I gave up before I'd even got the first piece fully cut out. I've thought about that velvet dress fairly regularly over the intervening three years (HOW has the past three years somehow also been nineteen decades, ugh), and my current velvet kick seemed like the right time to revisit it. My original velvet was red, but my guy at Walthamstow had this dark purple which I just couldn't say no to. I went for view D, with the long sleeves and straight skirt.

So. First of all, I really like the end result. This dress looks exactly the way I'd imagined it would; the bodice fits nicely, the skirt isn't overly clingy, the drape is cool, the sleeves fit well. It was also exactly the right length straight out of the packet, which is super rare for me. And I always love this colour on me. In terms of the final dress, this was a success. However, I changed many, many things to get here.

I got this pattern free with a magazine (or more accurately, I got some patterns packaged up together with a magazine I didn't read) and it's not technically my size. That's very rarely a problem I have with McCalls, but this one randomly stopped at size 16. I believe there is a separate plus size envelope, but the magazine wasn't giving that one out and I wasn't going to buy the same pattern again. I managed to get a really good fit by cutting the size 16 bodice and just grading out the hips and upper arms by a size or two. Based on the pieces that were already cut out my original plan was to skip over the hip issue by cutting the full skirt, but I am certain I wouldn't have liked this dress anywhere near as much if I'd done that.

This dress is supposed to have a lined bodice. I didn't do that because the bulk would have been beyond my sewing machine's capabilities. Even without a lining it was a bit of a struggle. The drape on the skirt is two layers sewn together, which are then pleated and folded forward on top of the seam line between the two front skirt pieces, and then sewn to the two layers of the front bodice. It's a giant lump of fabric, and had there been another two lining pieces in there I think my machine would have thrown a stomping tantrum. I used facing pieces instead. (Also, if I'd lined with the velvet as I originally thought I would before reading further down the instructions, this would be the heaviest dress in the entire world.)

The pattern also calls for shoulder pads and waist elastic, neither of which I used. Maybe an elastic casing wouldn't look weird in a viscose jersey version of this dress but it would sure as hell look weird in a velvet one. It's possible that this dress fits me so well despite being clearly too small by the sizing chart because there's a ton of ease in there intended to be gathered into elastic, and again I would not like this dress nearly as much if that had been the case. Whenever I see a pattern call for shoulder pads, I keep hoping they're going to be the tiny little cloth things I had in a couple of my jumpers back in 2009-ish, which didn't really look like shoulder pads but did correct my very round shoulders a bit. It never is, it's always ridiculous 80s nonsense and I'm not sure why pattern companies are still doing this. I want my tiny shoulder pads, dammit!

I will probably not wear this for my first Christmas with the in-laws. They are extraordinarily practical people and velvet dresses when you have no intention of leaving the house just aren't the thing. NYE might be its time, though; last year my friend insisted I wear my green velvet Magnolia dress to her low-key house party, and now I've accidentally started a tradition. This will be slightly easier to exist in, at least.

I was hoping I'd like this pattern enough to make it again because there's a maxi length version and I am dying for a non-fancy maxi dress I can wear in the winter, but the chances are extremely slim. I love this version but I feel like getting to it was too much of an accident. It looks like the picture but not very much like the measurements or instructions. For similar reasons I don't feel I can recommend the pattern either; it's a really lovely design but I just don't know what you'd get. You might get something that looks like this or you might get a weird blousy thing with 80s power shoulders.

Next up: A year-end wrap up post or two, followed by my many thoughts on a jacket pattern with many issues. Grumpy Jen incoming!

McCalls 7613

Fabric: Purple stretch velvet from Walthamstow Market
Cost: £9
Pattern details: Mock-wrap dress with lined bodice, dropped shoulders, optional long sleeves, straight or full (in two lengths) skirt options, and side drape
Size: 16 bodice, graded out beyond pattern sizing in the hips and bicep
Alterations: Swapped out lining for facings, omitted shoulder pads and waist elastic
Would make again/would recommend:  No/No

sewing plans: winter 2019/20

Sewing has been a bit of a struggle recently. Patrick and I both got ill simultaneously with slightly different things, then somehow SWAPPED bugs just as we'd started to recover, and the two back-to-back illnesses combined with the sudden cold weather has really done a number on my lungs. On top of that, my baste fit of the yellow cords shows that they are doing the exact thing I was worried they were going to do, and lack of ideas on how to fix it has killed my sewjo dead.

(We're taking a break from the RPDR gifs because I am currently overrelating to The Good Place in a way that probably isn't healthy.)

I wrote this plan over a month ago and honestly in my current state I really don't know how successful it'll be. But things are always worse when I don't have a plan out there, so I'm going to go ahead and post it anyway. I may only get half of it done if things don't improve, but that will still be something.

One of the major motivations behind this plan is to cut down on the size of my stash. We're short on space so I keep my fabric in a wooden box, which is currently massively overflowing and I don't like it. I also don't really like having a massive stash; it's rarely useful to me and I much prefer buying fabric when I already have a plan in mind for it. We're hoping to be able to move house soon, and when we leave here I want to have about half the amount of fabric I currently do, and I want it to fit in the box.

There are a couple of things here I will have to buy fabric for, but for the most part it's me going through my fabric catalogue and working out what the hell to do with everything. Here we go:


A second Rumana coat

I really love my original Rumana and I'd like to make another one in a brighter colour, possibly a slightly shorter length, with a tie belt. I've found some really lovely bright red melton wool (an ex Karen Millen according to my guy at Walthamstow) which I'm excited about, and now I just need to decide what kind of lining I'm going for and whether I do belt loops or sandwich the ties in the back seam.

A fancy pyjama set

I bought McCalls 7875 at the beginning of the year and I've been avoiding putting it on my plans until I actually had the fabric for it. I'm trying to be realistic about which fabrics I'm likely to be able to find without too much hassle, and this didn't seem to be one of them. However, I've now found this amazing silky blue stuff which I'm told is viscose but feels way more substantial, and it's going to be my pyjama jacket and bottoms. I'm slightly nervous that I don't quite have enough fabric, but I'm sure I can work something out. I'm also going to do a test run of the bottoms (to check for the butt/thigh issues I've historically had with woven pyjama bottoms) using some cream tartan wool mix I inherited from my friend's mother's stash.

A fancy Liberty shirt for Patrick

March is a Significant Birthday for Patrick, so I want to make him a proper fancy Liberty shirt. This is one of the few fabrics I'll have to buy and it's not going to be cheap. A quick glance suggests that Shaukat is a better place for the kind of prints he likes than the actual Liberty store right now, so I'll be picking something and making another Sew Over It Hackney shirt (possibly with a double cuff grafted on; I haven't decided yet). This is definitely not happening until I get Christmas and all its accompanying shopping obligations out of the way.

Some black leggings

This is one of those things that isn't strictly necessary right now, but I bought 4m of leggings fabric and using it up would go a long way to freeing up some space. I'm hoping to make two pairs of Jalie Clara leggings and possibly also a pair of shorts from it.

A bag set

OK, I said I'd catch up with this and then I didn't, so I'm putting it back on the official list. Portside travel set, in tapestry fabric (which I do have) and navy canvas or faux leather (which I don't), I will do it before my birthday next year goddammit. I also want to make a few tote bags; my original learn-to-sew tote bag is falling apart from constant use, so I'd like to use the heavier bits of cotton in my stash to make some replacements.

Another pair of Pietra trousers

Something I've been thinking about for a while is making a second pair of slimmed-down Pietra trousers in a fabric with a bit of stretch. I've now made several pairs and I vastly prefer the slimmer silhouette of my blue ones, but my thighs do spread out a LOT when I sit so they're not comfortable if I'm going to be sitting in them all day. I have a couple of pieces of stretch crepe that I bought for other, now-abandoned, purposes, and I'd like to turn one or both of them into slim-fit Pietras suitable for vegging out a bit in.

A Christmas dress

Guess what? More velvet! The first and almost permanently off-putting velvet dress I planned to make was McCalls 6713, and now that I know velvet isn't terrifying I want to have another go at actually making it. My fabric is Dairy Milk purple, which isn't necessarily a traditional Christmas colour, but it's one of my favourites. I don't get to wear it much (it's oddly difficult to pair with other colours and thus not much use to me as a top) and it looks really good on me, so Christmas is its time.

One or two cropped jacket toiles

I know I'm not going to be able to persuade myself to put actual light jackets on this winter post, but I might be able to argue for toiles that aren't really intended to be worn and will set me up for an easier spring. Especially if it clears out a couple of fabrics I haven't been able to work out what to do with. I have the Kwik Sew moto jacket and Sew Over It Amelia jacket, and I'd like to toile one or both depending on time and motivation.

A cape

I LOVE the new McCalls 8029 cape. I do not remotely need it and couldn't justify buying a second lot of wool in one season, but then yesterday Minerva agreed to send me 4m of purple wool blend coating for a blog post, so the cape will be mine! I'm very pleased.


I'm trying not to put a huge amount of pressure on myself to get all of this done. I just want to have several options to pull from so that when I feel the slightest bit of motivation to get going again, I can start with whatever kind of thing I'm in the mood for right then. Fingers crossed for me (and my poor beleaguered lungs, it really hurts to go outside right now), and hopefully I'll have something new to show you soon!