Introduction
Zenith is the final project that Seniors have to face at Freestyle. Each student chooses what they want to do. This project is the peak of our achievements at Freestyle, or the zenith, hence the name.
I chose to sew a coat. I chose to sew a coat because my family has a lot of history with sewing and the textile trade, and I’ve never really sewn anything before. I thought that as a first sewing project, I might as well jump straight into the deep end make a full size coat. The project has to be connected to our elective classes, so, on top of making a coat, I produced a quick video explaining the process of how I made the real thing.
From here, you can either:
1) Read through my explanation of the sewing process, which is just the script of the video I produced
2) Watch the recording of my presentation, which includes my video, with further explanations of the process, and shows off the finished coat
It’s up to you how you want to spend your time.
My Process
For my Zenith project, I chose to sew a coat. Specifically, I wanted to recreate the 10th Doctor/David Tennant’s coat from the show Doctor Who. Why his coat, you may be wondering? I just think it looks cool. That’s it. While originally my plan was to recreate the costume from the show, I dropped that part fairly quickly and decided I wanted to make it my own.
This is a fairly large project, so I’ve broken it down into steps. First and foremost, I need to find an actual pattern to sew. A sewing pattern is basically just an IKEA instruction manual. It tells you what pieces you need to cut out of what materials, and then how to assemble them. I found this pattern online, which I thought looked pretty good. I also had to find the materials to make the coat out of. The coat in the show is made from faux suede, so I went for the same thing.
Step two is to make a pattern out of the pattern. The pattern comes as four very large sheets of very thin paper, with all the pieces marked out on them. Because I didn’t want to cut up the pattern, I transferred all the pattern pieces onto parchment paper. This took a while. I had to painstakingly transfer every little marking from the original pattern. Once each piece was traced, I cut it out.
Now that I had the pattern pieces, I could start cutting them out for the mockup. A mockup, for the uninitiated, is basically a half-assed practice run of the coat. You cut out the pieces for the outer layer, but from a cheaper fabric. I got this white fabric from Joann’s, now that it’s closing down. I once again had to transfer all the markings, this time from the pattern pieces onto the fabric. The tracing and cutting is by far the longest step in sewing.
Once all the pieces are cut, I can move onto sewing. For the most part, this isn’t too difficult. The pieces are lined up and pinned, then you go back and sew them together. The main body of the coat wasn’t really a problem, because most of the stitches were pretty straightforward. Literally. The annoying part comes with the pockets. There are a bunch of different pieces that have to be layered properly, some need to be sewn into a seam and others don’t, and so on. It’s a real pain. I screwed both of them up on the mockup. But that’s what the mockup is for. It allowed me to figure out how the hell the pockets go together, and now I know what to look out for on the real thing. The other role the mockup plays is in fitting. If I’m gonna spend a month sewing a coat, I’d like it to actually fit me. For the most part, it did, but the sleeves were about an inch or so shorter than I’d wanted, so now I knew to cut those out slightly longer.
The proper coat is made out of three fabrics: Microsuede, or faux suede, a dark red cotton, and interfacing. The microsuede is the outer layer of the coat. It is a fake suede leather, so it’s pretty thick. The dark red cotton is the lining, or the inside of the coat. The interfacing is a white cloth, but you don’t actually see it in the final product. The interfacing is attached to the inside of the outer fabric, and adds extra stability to places that need it. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to do. The microsuede that I’m using is so thick and heavy that I don’t think the interfacing is actually doing anything.
The outer coat is very similar to the mock up, but this time I’m using the thick microsuede. For the most part, it wasn’t very difficult. Right up until the pockets, that is. You know how I said earlier that I now knew what to look out for with the pockets? Yeah, that was a lie. The pockets on this coat are “single welted”. That means they have that lip in the opening. Even after screwing up two pockets on the mockup, I didn’t get it completely right until the final one. Other than that, sewing the outer coat wasn’t too difficult.
Once I finished the outer coat, I had to sew the inner lining together. It was a very similar process to the outer coat, but this time I thankfully didn’t need to make more pockets.
The final step in the process was to attach the two pieces. This bit was a real pain. It’s not as simple as sewing a couple seams and calling it a day. Because the seams need to be hidden, I had to do a bunch of folding and finagling of the fabric to not only stitch it together, but stitch it invisibly. I definitely didn’t do all the steps correctly. In fact, I’d say I did most of them incorrectly, especially the lower hem. Either way, once everything was attached, all that was left was to sew on a couple of buttons and buttonholes.
Recording of my Presentation
