Assembling Body (View B) // Clare Coat Sewalong

Hey View B-ers! I haven't forgotten about you. Let's start sewing these babies up!

The first step is to sew your bust darts. I covered this in yesterday's post on assembling View A, so go check out those images if you need some help. After your darts are sewn and pressed, you'll want to sew your pocket linings to your coat panels. I didn't include a pattern piece for pocket extension interfacing, but I would consider pressing a rectangle of your fusible along the extension on the wrong side of the front coat piece just to help that area hold its shape (the side panel should already be interfaced entirely). Pin the pockets into place, like so:

Stitch the lining to the fly extensions at 5/8"/16mm. I somehow forgot to take a picture of the next step, but just press the lining flat and topstitch it to the pocket extension so it looks something like this:

Once all four pocket linings have been sewn to the coat pieces and pressed flat, line up the front coat and side panel along the side seam, right sides together. Pin along the entire length.

Sew along the length of the side seam and pocket lining at 5/8"/16mm. Sew around the pocket corner and lining twice for extra strength.

The pocket will lay against the coat front eventually, but first you need to snip a notch at the top and bottom corner of the pocket. Cut right to the stitch line without cutting through it above and below the pocket on each side.

Now it's time to sew your side panels to  the back coat piece. I must have been half asleep when I shot this part because I don't have a picture, but when the side panels have been sewn to the back and the seams have been pressed open, it will looks something like this:

You should be pressing your seams open on the back side first, and then hitting them from the front with some more heat and steam. When pressing wool, the seam will sink down and get beautifully flat. The curved surface of a seam roll will help prevent the seams from showing up on the body of the coat and a clapper will help gorgeous seams.

Once all your seams have been pressed open, it's time to secure the pocket in place. Right now it's just hanging on by a little stitching at the corner, so make sure it's pressed towards the front and mark a little line about 3/8" above and below the pocket opening, about 1/2" long. We are going to make a nice strong bar tack on these lines to secure the seam and pocket lining below to the coat body.

A bar tack is just a really dense zig zag stitch. Set your width to 2mm and your length to .25. Make sure your pocket is lying flat against the coat front while you're stitching through.

And that's it for today! On Monday we'll attach your sleeves and Clare will start to look like an actual coat!