Over the past few
years, I’ve developed a pretty solid me-made wardrobe. There aren’t too many holes or missing pieces
that I need in my daily life. I had a
few summer pieces I wanted to sew for the upcoming season but after that I was
planning on spending time this year on some more involved, time-consuming,
sewing-skill-challenging projects. The
first one is a classic trench coat – or the Briscoe trench coat, inspired by
‘Law and Order’ Detective Lennie Briscoe, who rocked an awesome Burberry trench
on the show (I often watch/listen to Law and Order reruns while I sew, mainly
if I’m home alone).
I was cruising
vintage patterns on Etsy and I found this 1974 vintage Vogue 1095 Christian
Dior trench coat pattern, and I bought it for $31, which may be the most I’ve
ever paid for a sewing pattern. I just
loved the back, and thought it was a nice variation on a classic theme. It was a size 14, for a 36” bust, so pretty
much perfectly sized.
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| Spoiler alert - I do not look this glamorous in mine. |
For the fabric, I
wanted something classic. I actually ordered two rounds of swatches from Mood
before I found something I liked – it’s hard to accurately judge ‘tan’ and
‘beige’ online. First I chose the lining
– this preppy plaid cotton blend.
I thought it was close
enough to be an homage to the Burberry trench lining. Then I tried to match the shade of tan for
the shell fabric. I eventually chose a beige stretch cotton sateen – both of these fabrics had ‘trench
coats’ mentioned in the Mood description, so I felt pretty confident with my
fabric choices.
Not only did I order
swatches, I made a muslin! I was serious when I said this was going to be some
labor intensive stuff (I hate making muslins).
It fit well, and the only adjustment I decided to make was to lower the
‘waistline’ about 1.5”. This is where a
casing for elastic is installed, and it was a little too high on me originally,
as I am very long-waisted.
The construction is
fairly straightforward, there are just a lot of steps (79 total!), and a lot of hand sewing
(historically not my favorite). All of the seams are edgestitched and then topstitched. The waist is gathered by stitching a bias
tape casing on the inside of the shell and then inserting and stitching down
elastic, which I thought was clean and clever.
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| Waistline elastic casing from the inside |
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| waistline elastic casing from the outside |
For the lining the waist is
just sewn with elastic thread. Speaking
of the lining – my plaids match so perfectly in the lining I can’t stand it. Of
course they do, it’s a lining that isn’t prominently visible! I will never
match plaids this well again in my life, and I’ve already accepted that.
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| plaid matching |
Some minor fails – I
wish the lapels were crisper where they meet the collar. This was tricky to
sew, I even hand stitched part of it. I’m not sure if it’s a result of
sandwiching the upper and lower collar in between the front and the facing, or
if it’s the result of the stretch in the sateen, or both. I will live with it.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” is my current sewing mantra. The inside of the cuffs aren't as clean as I'd like, although it looks fine from the outside. It was 4 layers of fabric and I was trying to wrangle the coat while I sewed it and it's not perfect.
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| button/cuff detail |
I thought about doing
bound buttonholes, but the more I saw RTW trench coats, the more I saw just
regular buttonholes – and I started seeing trench coats everywhere while I was
sewing this. I just pop on some “Law and
Order” for reference…..the buttons are also from Mood.
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| button detail |
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| back yoke detail |
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| the inside |
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| the belt loops |
Added to my to-sew list: a vinyl version
inspired by Mood! Perhaps using the Deer and Doe trench pattern (which I’m
going to try and modify to a zipper front closure….).
