We were bound to get to fall sewing eventually: Burda 2/17 Coat #103

After the summer sewing orgy and my decision to try limiting myself to two new garments for me each month, I thought I’d start with something nice and complicated and time-consuming … like a trench coat. This pattern from Burda was nicely tailored and classic, and my favourite local fabric store was selling some beautiful heavy linens that felt like they would make great transitional outerwear … and here we are.

Mind you, it took forever. This coat was the only thing I sewed for myself in September. (Yes, it is January.)

I did my standard 2″-per-side FBA, left in the side bust dart, and rotated the waist dart into the waist tucks.  I did a quick muslin of the bodice pieces to be sure it would work before cutting it out of the linen–not a step I usually bother with but I knew this coat was going to be a complicated sew and I didn’t want to get to the end and realize it didn’t work.

I did Hong Kong binding for the first time ever, and it was by far the most time consuming part of the entire project. It’s scrap from a silk/cotton voile from a couple of previous projects, so maybe a bit nicer than the standard bias binding, but super soft and lightweight and a great match for the linen. It’s a bit wonky but … well, hopefully people won’t be scrutinizing the interior of my trench coat while I’m wearing it.

Also, one side of the notched collar is a bit wonky. The linen is just heavy enough not to want to be tidy and small in complicated seam allowances, and it was getting to the point where my efforts to fix it were making it worse instead of better, so I stopped. It looks fine for the general public but I’m sure my fellow sewers would spot it a mile away.

This was one of those years where we had summersummersummersummer, approximately fifteen minutes of fall, and then winter. In other words, it went from too hot to wear a jacket to too cold to wear this jacket very quickly, but I did get a few good days of trench coat weather in there and it was comfortable and swishy and also nicely teal, which is all I really wanted from it.

Sizing Note

My standard Burda sizing: I should be a size 40-44 based on body measurements, and this was a size 38, graded to 42 at the hips, with a 2″ FBA per side on the bodice. Basically I sized down by 1 throughout except for the bust.