The red coat part 1

The finished coat

There will be a few posts covering this. I will not duplicate what I have said already and wherever possible I will give techniques I really like (as they work for me), links and books I find particularly helpful etc. 

These are the previous links in this blog:

Why make a coat , my original toile and what needed changing - 23 and 24 Jan 2011

The camel coat including the sleeve insertion - 25 Jan to 2 Feb 2011

A couple of photos of the blue coat are here, but it seems I never wrote much about making the blue coat - 1 Feb 2012!

Before Christmas 2024 I decided I would make another coat. I had previously made a camel coloured cashmere one, more of an autumn / spring coat and a blue Welsh Herringbone Tweed one to the same pattern. I wear quite a lot of red/ purple so thought something in that colour range would be an asset to the wardrobe. 

Initially I was tempted by some tweed I saw on a fb advert, which looked great. As I sat down to order this I thought that not having ordered from the firm before I would send for a couple of samples. I am very glad I did because the fabric was super thin and in my view not even thick enough for a lined skirt in Winter. Also being so fine, when even a small distance away I could net discern that it was Herringbone. 

I do really like to feel material before I buy it! So I decided to take a look at Harris Tweed Harris, a store we have visited and bought material from previously. My last order was for Herringbone that I used to cover our Ercol Suite. The fabric has done remarkably well and still looks as good as new, even though it was recovered in 2018 

The suite

The other problem with looking for red Herringbone is that there is not such a great choice of red as there is, say blue. But I would live with that! 

So one Thursday evening I did the order, 3m of 150 cm wide . This would allow plenty of spare and I was planning a matching skirt, at least! On the Saturday morning the postman knocked with the parcel. Exceptionally good service when one considers it has come from the Western Isles. (1)

The fabrics, the red one labelled as Donegal Herringbone Tweed, the others as Yorkshire Tweed and at the front the Harris Tweed that I actually used. 

So the outer fabric was sorted, other things were needed before I got started. 

Lining- I knew I had some colourful silk lining fabrics in my store somewhere, bought from Bollington Mill in Cheshire on special sale days when we lived close by. Initially I found one 3 m length, this was not the one I had in my mind. So it meant going through, carefully,  all my fabric lengths. This  was successful and fortunately the one I had in my mind was found and it was 3m x 150 cm of silk twill. This was not as distinctive as the lining  in the blue coat but  I still liked it a lot. 

The lining - I began going to the sales to get the white waste silk for my own dyeing, it was easy to get distracted to these beautiful fabrics. 

Now the interfacing. I like to use fine fusible knitted interfacing for these coats. It has worked for the previous two ( and for woollen woven skirts I make) so I will continue with that. It is increasingly difficult to find, but worth searching for. I had 3 m in stock! 

(The coat  is a very easy pattern (2) and does not include other interfacings as I would use on a jacket for structure.) 

Sewing thread. As always I seemed to have every colour except the one I wanted to match! One can never have too many sewing threads, so I happily (except for the price) bought two more from my local branch of John Lewis. It is essential to see sewing threads before buying them I feel! 

This is how I store my smaller spools of sewing threads, larger cones are elsewhere 

Buttons

I was glad to see I had some lovely vintage ones which matched exactly, they had weight and looks as if they were designed to be coat buttons. 

Button Loops. As before I will make these from wool. The post about the camel coat (27Jan 2011) shows the lucet I used then for making these square braid. I have since taken workshops on making a lucet. I discovered a much better tool, (3) which is a delight to use. I worked out I needed 40 cm, this only took about an hour but deciding which yarn to use took at least twice as long. I looked at the yarns making up the coat weave, and one was a lovely lilac colour, but this would not work at all. So I looked at my extensive collection of Shetland yarns from Jamieson and Smith and Jamieson in Shetland and came up with a better match.

The lucet

I feel the loops are ‘grounded’ in my local  area. While researching the origin of the lucet, think Viking era, I discovered a very good one was found in an excavation in Thetford (where I attended secondary school) dating back to the 10-11 Century by Elizabeth Crowfoot. It was made from a cow metapodial. 

I have sketched it (4) 

There are several online articles about lucet, I rather like this one! (5) 

Now onto the cutting out and sewing preparation next

1. If you ever get to visit the Western Isles, this is situated in Tabert, and virtually shares a car park with Harris Gin also a stylish  shop/ distillery/coffee shop  to visit. Link
2. The pattern is Vogue V 8548, when I looked to write this it is still possible to get the pattern. However, I have altered it a lot! 
3. A lucet is a wonderfully useful braid which can be made as fine or chunky, plain or decorated, as you like. If you are interested in finding out more and having a go yourself, look up Ziggy lucet making on you tube. 
4. More about the excavations can be found in East Anglian Archeology report no 22 (1984) which is available online. 
5. Haldane the Viking blogpost about lucets