Gertie at Gertie’s New Blog for Better Sewing is hosting a Sewalong this month for the Lady Grey coat from Colette patterns. I’ve lusted over this coat a little in the past, but wasn’t sure if it would really be that flattering on me – there’s an awful lot of fabric over my hip area where I already have a lot of padding, and I’m not sure a wrap styled coat is my thing, but I couldn’t resist and joined up!

I’ve got my fabric ready to go. For the shell I got a super-funky chartreuse green and brown toile. The toile is 100% cotton upholstery fabric. It’s a little stiff for the jacket, especially with the prounounced peplum, but I think after a washing it will soften a bit and work out well.

I found some brown and white polka dot charmeuse for the lining, although I’d really like to find an orange version of the polka dots to line it. We’ll see what happens.

My Lady Grey fabric

I’m really looking forward to the sewalong. Gertie uses great techniques on her garments, which she promises to go over during the project. I think that will help me stay on task and not cut corners! And it will be fun to see how everyone else is progressing in the flickr pool set up for the participants.

I also have two other coat projects that I will be working on. The first is a high priority project! My wonderful husband bought my new sewing machine for me as a gift way back in APRIL, at which time I promised to make him an overcoat as a thank you! We picked out the pattern (Burda 7780), and went to the local scary fabric warehouse (for an entertaining man’s-view of fabric shopping, check out his blog entry!) where he chose some wonderful black window-pane wool suiting and some funky purple-fuchsia lining. I never quite got to the coat, with the weather warming up and a wedding to plan, I figured I had lots of time. Now here we are, coming up on coat season, and I haven’t finished it. I haven’t even cut the pattern!

My man certainly has an eye for fabric!

I think the tailoring techniques that Gertie will be covering in the Lady Grey sewalong will be just as applicable to menswear, so I’ll be working on this project side-by-side with the green toile!

Finally, I had included a longer coat in my fall wardrobe plan and have the pattern cut, the fabric washed and I’m ready to go. I’m using Simplicity 2812, one of the Project Runway patterns with all the mix and match parts. I found a very textured mustard yellow fabric in the upholstery section and had some yellow sunflower charmeuse that will be perfect as the lining. I’m considering underlining this coat to make it last a little longer into the season.

The sunflower coat – long enough to wear with skirts!

 So there we have my coat project. Projects. Many, many coats of many, many colors.