Once upon a time, in the fall of 2011, I enrolled in one of the
"sew like a pro" classes offered by the San Diego continuing education program. Our goal for this class was to fit and make a lined trenchcoat. We could choose any trenchcoat pattern that we wished, but I, along with probably about half of the class, chose
McCall's 5525:
McCall's 5525 has your traditional trenchcoat and a few trendy-at-the-time options among its five views. Over the years, this pattern has been
reviewed 60 times on PatternReview and was even a
"pattern of the year" back in 2009:
Anyway, fitting and constructing the jacket in class was very slow-going. The class had ~20 students, and the instructor individually checked our fit at each major step of tissue-fitting. For those of us with a decent number of adjustments, tissue-fitting took up around half of our class sessions, with the class meeting for 3 hours once a week. (I took other projects along to work on in class to make use of my time.) Note that our instructor was excellent with fitting and a bit of a perfectionist in that department, so that added to the slow pace. About halfway through the class, I happily discovered that I was finally pregnant, and then got hit full-force with first trimester fatigue and morning sickness.
When the class ended in late January, I had a changing body and a partially finished jacket that I decided needed to be "put away" for a while. Those jacket pieces lived in the trunk of my car for over two years. Fast forward to March of 2014, I now had a toddler, lived in Seattle, and those jacket pieces were still living in the trunk of my car. I'd revived both my blog reading and writing a few months ago, and saw that
Lynelle of You Sew Girl was looking for people to join her in a trenchcoat sewalong, and I decided to join the group doing the
Trenchcoat Sewalong 2014.
Here's where I'm at today:
- I have my pieces of McCall's 5525 retrieved from my car trunk and re-washed. Thankfully, I'd elected to sew one of the more timeless views--View C, so I don't think I'll have any problem with my coat looking dated. I did have to leave off the gun flaps because I ran out of fabric.
- Speaking of the fabric, it's a sage green cotton twill with a little bit of stretch to it. I purchased it from Vogue fabrics in Evanston when my husband and I took a vacation to Chicago in April of 2011. In my head, when I picked out the fabric for this project, I'd had it in my head that my fabric was close to 60" wide, when in reality, it was closer to 50". Hence, the running out of fabric for the gun flaps.
- The lining is a printed poly charmeuse purchased from a Hancock in Alabama when my husband and I visited his parents there in October 2011. We didn't have Hancocks in San Diego, so it was a treat for me to visit that store.
- The shell is mostly completed, minus setting in the sleeves:
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McCalls 5525 shell minus sleeves
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- The lining/facing construction is done, complete with sleeves:
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| McCall's 5525 lining/facing |
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- The sleeves are completed. The self-fabric tie belt is cut out, but not sewn:
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| McCall's 5525 sleeves and belt |
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Overall, things aren't in bad shape, considering how long they'd spent sitting in my trunk. There is some fraying, especially along the cut edges of the lining and some edges of the twill. I hope that doesn't cause too many problems with completing the construction.
I tried the jacket on (I'd thread-basted a CF line on the shell in class, which I'm very thankful for now), and it's a little big, but I weight a little less now than I did when I did the initial fitting.
If I hadn't already done all of the topstitching on the seams, I'd probably just take the princess seams in a bit, but that's way too much for for me for finishing up a UFO, so I'll just live with it being a little roomy. I'll certainly easily be able to wear it over a bulky sweater or other layers.
