pink coat::day 3

Just joining us?  Please read pink coat::day 1.  Then jump in and have your say!

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When I decide to design something, the very first thing I do is research.  When I have a finished product that looks unique because of my personal preferences, the fabric and trims I used, and design issues I solved in my own way, people often tell me that they wish they could come up with ideas like that.  They assume, I suppose, that I woke up from a dream with an image of the finished outfit blazing in my mind.  Or that when I designed it, I was in an empty cell, just me and a blank piece of paper, a bare light bulb hanging...

Maybe you're that good.  I'm not.

Before I can form an idea of what I want, I have to do research.  So I go to Google Image Search, or ShopStyle.com and I type in "coat".  Then "princess coat".  Then "double-breasted coat".  And so on.  (Typing "breasted" into any search engine is touchy.  That could go bad in a hurry.) 

I look through the tons of images quickly.  If I'm going to love something, it'll leap out at me immediately.  I save several images as I go along, until I have a good handful.  Then I open them all up in Photoshop at the same time, squint, tap my teeth with my fingernail, and the primordial ooze begins to evolve. 

All of that is to say, I would show you my design board, but since I've grabbed pictures from anywhere and everywhere, I can't just throw them up here, because they belong to other folks.  So we'll have to make do with my drawings (sorry, I know my creative talent lies elsewhere) and I'll show you what I found.  As we discuss this, please do go do your own searches and see some actual coats with the design features we're talking about. 

Now, when I think "really girly", I immediatly think ruffles.  I'm a sucker for ruffles.  After reading your comments over the last couple of days, I have several ideas kicking around in my head.   

I'm considering using this for the lining:

It's a 1/8" Kaufman cotton gingham in pink and brown from Fabric.com.

We can, of course, mix and match any of the parts from the coats I'm thinking up, or do something different entirely.  

 This coat has just a little flare, and a deep ruffle on the bottom.  The sleeve on the left is cuffed with the lining fabric, the one on the right is finished with a ruffle. 

This one is technically only "princess" to the waist, then a skirt is added below that.  It's also double-breasted, round-collared, and has the same choice of sleeves as above.  We can put a belt on it or not.  Is a belt a good idea on a children's coat?

This one has princess lines all the way down, but a lot more flare is added than the first coat up there.  It's single breasted, has ruffles on either side of the placket, and has a belt.  It also has two sleeves we haven't considered yet, a Juliet-type on the left, and a plain straight sleeve on the right.  We could also add more puff in the top of the sleeve for a different look.  Didn't think of that while I was drawing. 

As far as a capelet, if we decide we want one, we can add it to any of the styles above.  It might be better, if we do decide to do a capelet, to do a simpler style so fancy details aren't wasted hiding out under there. 

I don't believe that a capelet would actually make a child look as much like a football player as this drawing would have you believe.

Now we have some inspiration to chew on.  I only drew round collars because that's what we seemed to agree on. We can only make one coat this time around, so we need to narrow down our options.  We need to choose:

-a sleeve
-an amount of flare
-whether we want a belt
-whether we want a capelet

Those are my thoughts.  Yours?

~Erin~

pink coat::day 2

Princess it is, then!

Now that we've decided we want a princess coat, we need to decide a few more things before we start sketching:

-What length do we want our coat?

-What sleeve do we want to use?

-Do we want a round or pointed collar?

-Double or single breasted? 

-Will we, or will we not, line our coat?

I've got my pencil poised, waiting for your decisions...

~Erin~

pink coat::day 1

Happy Tuesday!  Is everybody ready to design a coat?

First, here's the fabric I have for the coat:

Oh! So soft, so warm, so pink.  This is Malden Mills Polartec Classic 300 (which means it's heavyweight fleece), 68" wide, with a waterproof coating.  Oh yes, this is the good stuff. And before we get started, the rules of the game are the same as with our Autumn A-line dress: I'll post, we'll discuss it in the comments, and I'll post again.  In this way, we'll narrow down our ideas and see our coat take shape.  The prize for the most helpful comment is 1 yard of this yummy, party-pink fleece.  (More than that would take a huge box to mail!)

Enough! Let's begin!

As with a dress, the first thing we need to determine when designing a coat is the silhouette.  As with a dress, the silhouette can be one of these three: A-line, Princess, or Yoke. 

So, the first knot we need to untangle is, what silhouette do we want for our pink coat?  When we determine that, we'll get going on all the other details.

Okay, your turn!

~Erin~

playing with pleats

Dictionary.com defines a pleat as "a fold of definite, even width made by doubling cloth or the like upon itself and pressing or stitching it in place."

I just have to ask, is there anything like fabric?

Throughout this lesson, I'll show you how to make the pleats, and how they drape. We'll discuss:

Cartridge pleats
Box pleats
Inverted pleats
Rolled pleats

Now, it seems to me that pleats can either stand up or lie flat.  In the standing up category we have accordion and cartridge pleats.  Accordion pleats are made with some type of fancy machinery that I don't own, that crimps the fabric into permanent folds all the way down the length of the fabric. 

Cartridge pleats are created, essentially, by a long running stitch down the edge of the fabric that's then pulled up to create tight little standing-up pleats.  These are the type of pleats used in smocking, and here are some:

You can see the gathering threads there on the left.  I did not create these cartridge pleats with a needle, thread, and long running stitch, rather, I used a smocking pleater.  It does the same thing, but it does it with many threads at once, and it does it with gears.  Anything that can be done with gears gets my vote.  And takes a fraction of the time. 

Here they are from the edge. 

These pleats don't lie flat, rather, when you're finished pleating, you bind the edge.  If you were using cartridge pleats at the top of a skirt, you'd bind them with the waistband.  These are intended to be at the neckline, so they'd be bound with bias binding to become...the neckline. 

And here's how the cartridge pleats drape. 

They take up more or less fabric depending on the bulk of the fabric itself.  It would take a lot more batiste to make the same width of finished pleating than, say, velveteen.  I do not know, nor can I seem to find out, why they're called "cartridge" pleats.  It seems like there ought to be a good reason.  If anybody can enlighten us, please feel free to do so.

In the lying-flat category, we have knife or side pleats.  These are pleats that are all laid to the side.  Like this:

These pleats need 3 times the fabric of the finished pleated area.  So, for one inch of pleated fabric, we'll need 3 inches of fabric to start with.  Because each half of the actual pleat takes up 1", and the fabric over the pleat is 1".  If we were doing half-inch pleats, we'd need 1/2" for each half of the pleat and 1/2" on the face of our pleated panel. 

Since we're doing 1" pleats, we'll start by folding the fabric and placing a pin 1" from the fold:

See how that takes up 2"  Now I'll baste down the fabric, 1" from the fold.  Then I'll press the pleat to one side, like this:

Then, to do another pleat, I'll measure 2" from the center of my first pleat. 

2", because it'll take 1" to clear the first pleat, and 1" to go down inside the next one.  The pin is where I should fold it.  Then I'll baste, and press it to the side like the first one.

And so on, until I end up with this:

When I've finished my pleats, I sit down and pick out all those basting threads.  They hold the pleats in place while I iron them, and then graciously step out when the hard work is done.   

Here you can see how 1" knife pleats drape. 

The top half of this shows pressed pleats, and the bottom shows what happens when you leave them unpressed. 

The next two types of pleats are really the same thing.  Box pleats and Inverted pleats are like identical twins, only one likes to play the piano, the other the violin, one keeps a tidy room the other's an incorrigible slob, and so on.

I won't tell you which one's the slob.  In fairness to all pleats.

Here are box pleats: 

And, once I flip them over, they become inverted pleats!

The process for making these is the same, but you make the difference when you make these on the right or wrong side of your fabric. 

Again, we'll make 1" pleats. 

Fold and mark it the same as for knife pleats:

Baste it, and press the pleats, not to one side, but evenly on both sides of your basting line. 

To add another pleat, measure 2" from the center of the first pleat and put a pin.  2", because it'll take 1/2" to clear the first pleat, then 1" down into the next pleat, and you'll press that on both sides of the new basting line, taking up the remaining 1/2". 

When you press the second pleat, it should just touch the edge of the first. 

Until you get a row of pretty little boxes, like this:

Ah! C'est magnifique!

Here they are, pressed and unpressed:

And our inverted pleats:

I might point out here, that if you did an entire panel of inverted pleats, it would only be on the edges that you'd be able to tell them apart from box pleats.  See how the space between the inverted pleats made little boxes?

Long view:

Just for kicks, let's do one really wide inverted pleat.  It seems we often see inverted pleats alone.  On the back of a skirt or a coat, for instance. 

Oh, yes, I like that very much.

Another thing you can do with box or inverted pleats is stack them.  Here I've made stacked inverted pleats:

Once I had the basic inverted pleat, I just folded another pleat in on top of it:

and pressed that.  Then I basted across the top to keep it in place. 

To make another next to it, I measured out 3".  Because this pleat takes up 2" more fabric than a basic 1" box pleat, and I'm measuring half of it here.

The last type of pleats we'll discuss today is rolled pleats. 

They are, well, rolled. They take up five times the fabric of the finished pleat.  So, for a one inch rolled pleat, we'll need 5" of fabric. 

Now, these are difficult to explain, but easy to do, so stick with me here for a minute, and it'll become clear what we're doing, k?

I mark off 5" on the wrong side of my fabric.  The two pins at 1 and 5 are my ends. 

The pin at 1 shows where the finished pleat will lie.  The pin at 3 shows the first pleat fold.  You with me?

I fold it on the first pleat fold (3), and the pins at 1 and 5 come together. 

Then I fold the 3 pin to the 1 and 5 pins. You see where we're going with this?

Then I fold the roll I'm forming to the 0 pin. 

Then I open the pleat up, and pin it in place.  To one side like a knife pleat.  

What I end up with is a roll of 4" of fabric underneath 1" of fabric.  See?

Baste across the top of this bad boy to keep it down. 

Now, to add another, I'm measuring 5" out from the edge of the previous pleat.  That'll give me enough fabric to do the whole mad thing over again. 

After rolling/basting, rolling/basting, rolling/basting, I've got a little row of them.  As you can see, in anything but the thinnest fabric, this is going to make a very thick seam.

Now, why would you go to all that trouble?  Because rolled pleats take up a ton of fabric, they drape beautifully:

I'm not sure they're the type of pleats you'd press, so much.  

Now that we've discussed how to make all these fun pleats, I'm sure you're dying to get busy fiddling with some yourselves.  I won't keep you any longer.  Go pleat!

~Erin~

Autumn A-line

Although I thought "Sadie Marie" was sweet, and "Fair Frock in Featherwale" made me chuckle, the prize for naming our offspring goes to Kerri. "Autumn A-line" is simple, descriptive, and just a touch of sweet.  You'll find the archives here. 

Okay!  I'm tired of green.  Are you?  Next week we'll discuss pleats, and then we'll plunge into that pink fleece.  Ooooh, I can hardly wait.

Send me your address, Kerri, and you'll be petting your fabric in no time.  Thanks everybody!  Have a great weekend!

~Erin~