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Grand debut

 I made it!  I got my outfit done just in the nick of time.  I finished hemming and pressing at 1pm and needed to leave the house at 6pm.  That was a pretty close call but worth it.  My coat came out much nicer than I could have hoped.

This is the Swing Coat from Gertie's patreon.  I cut a size 10 and the only modification was skipping the cuffs.  I just hate cuffs, they snag on everything.  The joy of sewing my own clothes is that I could just skip the cuffs.  I finished it off with a hand sewn hem instead.

I did screw it up pretty badly at the start.  I got the front facings reversed which made the coat curl open in front.  I was so confused and mad, thinking it was the lining somehow causing my problem.  A search on Facebook revealed others that made the same mistake.  By that point I had the facing in, understitched, and the lining attached.  I spent 3.5 hours ripping the facings back out so I could swap them.  I was on Zoom calls for work with a seam ripper, removing all of my hard work.  Very frustrating but once I had the facing on the right way, the coat draped beautifully.

The lining gave me fits.  I spent about an hour under my dress form tuning up the way the lining fit.  Enough ease to be comfortable but not enough to look baggy.  Still not 100% with it but at some point I had to stop pinning and start sewing so I could wear it out!  Coat hem was done by hand to get that gorgeous, invisible finish.  And then I realized that the skirt needed to be hemmed by hand so that it matched.  Ugh.  That did not help me get done on time.

Combined with my Hepburn top in black and the matching Stanwyck skirt, I had a very fancy suit.  I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before since I was basically resewing the entire front of the coat so that meant I didn't set my hair.  I had to do a hot set so my hair could match the outfit.  Not my favorite way to set my hair, especially as it takes so much work.  But these are the sacrifices we make for glamour.

I spent several hours with my hair up in those alligator clips to make sure my curls stayed.  I let them down about five minutes before we walked out the door.  Between the hours spent sewing and then doing the hair and makeup and getting into my gods forsaken stockings that did not want to hook up on the left rear clip, my look probably took 25 hours of work.  But worth it!


I never would have found this in my size on the rack.  I loved wearing it out and it was surprisingly comfortable.  Minus me finding a missed pin when I sat down the first time (OUCH).  Since it's separates I expect I'll have different parts of this outfit showing up a lot.  I'll need a couple days of recovery time after that sewing marathon before I start my next project.  If nothing else, I've got to clean up the disaster that is my sewing area.  And my closet.  I totally posted these on FB and then realized you can see my dirty laundry pile in the background.  Not a shining moment on social media.

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