The Strawberry Coat Revisited

So the first item I am going to finish for the UFO contest on Pattern Review is Ava's Strawberry Coat. This was meant to be finished for Winter last year (Its summer here now) but it didn't quite happen. Why? Well because like all my unfinished items, something difficult happened and rather than resolve the problem, I moved onto something else. Big flaw I have (but it would seem I'm not alone).

The problems with the coat were:

• I cut the pieces and then thought I had cut the wrong piece and re-cut, but it was actually the right piece and now it isn't going to be double breasted anymore.
• Setting in the sleeves was just too darn hard
• The sleeve wouldn't fit round the sewing machine, which meant it had to be a sewn a different way to how I would normally do it.

When I retrieved it from the pile I found all the cut pieces and the main part of the coat sewn together with one sleeve set in with pins.

I basted the sleeve in, took out the pins and sewed it on the machine. I then set the other sleeve with pins (my skill set having improved considerably since last time I tried), basted and sewed it in by machine. That actually didn't take very long at all.

I lost Ava after that, she wandered off to another part of the house and I needed to do some adjustments. I put the coat aside and worked on ripping the seams out of a re-fashioning project instead. Hopefully I'll catch her when she comes home tonight and get started on the lining.

No great photos as Ava was being coy!


So I have two blogging resolutions as well.
1. Stop starting sentences with so (atrocious grammar)
2. Stop overusing brackets to explain myself