Thank you Tess & Gigi for taking these photos on our walk last week. Photography by Anastassia

I always knew “Croc” would remain one of my best friends after col­lege. She used to share her crois­sant ends with me at Star­bucks dur­ing our fresh­man year at Notre Dame. Yes, you heard me right — “crois­sant ends.”

Almost every Tues­day and Thurs­day before our His­to­ry class togeth­er, we used to grab Star­bucks cof­fee and crois­sants at the “Hud­dle” on cam­pus. Not only would she share her study notes, stress, and gos­sip with me, she always offered me the greasy ends of her crois­sant, which she knew I loved!

After fresh­man year, I did the unex­pect­ed and trans­ferred to a rival school. Despite this, Croc, a die-hard Notre Dame fan, con­tin­ued to be one of my best friends. Because of her unwa­ver­ing sup­port and loy­al­ty, I cred­it much of my recent suc­cess (and fresh­man lbs…just kid­ding) to her. As a token of my appre­ci­a­tion, I’ve been schem­ing with her broth­er about mak­ing her a cus­tom-made garment.

Orig­i­nal­ly, I planned on mak­ing her a dress. But ulti­mate­ly I decid­ed that with­out her exact mea­sure­ments, a coat would be bet­ter (and like­ly worn more often).

Dur­ing a recent shop­ping trip to Fish­man Fab­rics in Chica­go, I found 2 yards of navy cash­mere. Even though the cash­mere was soft­er than most coat­ing fab­rics, it was real­ly beau­ti­ful and I knew I could make a cash­mere leather coat you wouldn’t find at your aver­age depart­ment store. I also knew the navy col­or would be a per­fect fit for a her, a die-hard Notre Dame fan.

 

It took me a cou­ple weeks to nail down her coat design. At first, I almost chose a col­lar­less coat pat­tern. But I ulti­mate­ly decid­ed that the coat would be warmer with a small collar.

 I loved a Bur­dastyle jack­et I once made for a woman years ago. I loved its small pleat at the col­lar. Since this Burd­satyle coat pat­tern didn’t come in my friend’s size, I decid­ed to use Kwik Sew’s 3716 blaz­er pat­tern, which was sim­i­lar to the Bur­dastyle coat. The pat­tern had a dart at the shoul­der rather than a pleat, but it seemed it was worth the trade-off con­sid­er­ing the accu­ra­cy and detailed instruc­tions the Kwik Sew Pat­tern offered.

I made the fol­low­ing adjust­ments to the Kwik Sew’s 3716 blaz­er pat­tern (size small):

-Length­ened the jacket

-Elim­i­nat­ed the ver­ti­cal side pockets

-Added slant­ed hor­i­zon­tal welt pock­ets with gold buttons

-Added 3 front hook and eye closures

-Added leather to the sleeves

- Added lin­ing. (The pat­tern did not have lin­ing, so I had to make pat­tern pieces for the inside lin­ing pieces.)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I made a very big mis­take ear­ly in the process, which ruined the over­all coat! And because of this mis­take, I’m dis­sat­is­fied with the coat and will design a new coat for my friend. The new coat will be made with a new design, new wool, and new colors.

What was the big mistake?

The Kwik Sew 3716 pat­tern only required that the inside lapel lin­ing piece be inter­faced. The pat­tern did not require the front pan­els to be inter­faced, (Prob­a­bly because the pat­tern was designed for a blaz­er with no lining).

 I knew in my gut that I should line the front pan­els with horse­hair. But for some odd rea­son, I decid­ed to fol­low the direc­tions. (I nor­mal­ly don’t fol­low direc­tions, so this mis­take is killing me!) Because I didn’t use inter­fac­ing on the front pan­els, the coat was not crisp and clean. Instead, the soft cash­mere lays a lit­tle wrinkly on the chest and the inside lin­ing seams are seen through the front of the coat, arrghh!

I know I sound picky, but it’s not the clean tai­lored look I was hop­ing for and pic­tured on my friend. Though this mis­take was big and cost­ly, I learned a lot from it!

Stay tuned to see how the new coat turns out!

Enjoy the season 🙂

Buy ECCO Wom­en’s Hobart Buck­le Boot
on Sale here:

And don’t forget to sign up for my

Sewing with Silks Webinar

on Burdastyle

(this Thursday) Oct. 23

at 11:00 am EST!

BURDASTYLE ON DEMAND WEBINAR SALE!! 

Save 30% on Bur­daStyle On Demand Web Sem­i­nars with Offer Code NSM30