Iplehouse SID coat commission FINISHED!!!

This was finished several days ago, just now finding the time to blog about it. Let's just say this one was an experience! I worked off of a tape form, which is something I had never done before, and something I am still a bit on the fence about how well it works. I have another project lined up in the future in which I will be working off of another tape form, so I am not opposed to using one. It's just a matter of checking measurements.

I was all set to make a simple shirt to put on the tape form to ensure that the coat fit properly. And then the obvious occurred to me to compare the tape form's measurements to the company's doll measurements. Come to find out, the tape form was at least 2 cm larger than the body, which is pretty much the right amount of space to allow for the clothing to fit under the coat. So this step wasn't necessary. I made a test run of the coat, sent it to my buyer to fit on her doll, and went on from there.

This coat was to be made out of black velvet, with a brocade for the lining and a satin for the edging. Three beautiful fabrics. A tricky combination. I had never worked with velvet before, so was excited to get this opportunity. Velvet and brocade both ravel out really badly. Velvet has a lot of movement to it, brocade does not. I found the only way to create neat seams was to first baste it by hand, and then go over that seam with the machine. If you find yourself needing to take something out, these aren't very forgiving fabrics to make mistakes with. Consequently, I ended up having to redo both the coat and the lining as it sort of dissolved when I was taking out some seams. (I was being gentle too - no medieval sort of surgical techniques here. It's just delicate fabric.) It really wasn't too much of a pain to re-do them, and I got both done in maybe a couple of hours. The coat in itself was fairly simple. What was the daunting part about it was the edging. That satin edging.....

Satin is wirey. It doesn't really want to neatly fold. It was a little tricky to figure out the best method to edge the coat with it, what with all those corners and tips. In the end, success! I think the trim overall took at least 6 hours, maybe more. I did this part all by hand, and finished the underside with a neat, blind whip stitch, taking care to check every time I put the needle into the fabric that it did not go through the velvet. I had to redo nearly one entire sleeve edging as I didn't see I was going through the velvet, which left tiny red stitching visible on the outside of the coat. Bad lighting - I shouldn't have been working on it that late any ways!  I am very pleased with how it all turned out in the end!

Okay, now for some pics! The lining. The sleeves are fully lined with this as well. I don't think I got a good picture of them...

The coat before I re-did it. Thankfully, I was able to re-use the same collar, which was a relief as for some reason that collar gave me a great deal of grief.

The trim. So far, so good!

The underside of the trim.

The finished coat!!

The back.

The underside of the tails.

Tips for when you work with velvet/brocade together, or even separate.

1) Be patient and don't use a heavy hand

2) Baste everything (and use large stitches to it's easier to take out!) as these fabrics slide all over the place.

3) Don't be afraid to fray check the edges. This is the only way I was able to handle the coat  to sew on the trim without  it fraying to pieces