Part 1 : The Pattern

To make any garment, you need a pattern, and garment patterns are more complicated than you might think. There are more pieces than just front, back, sleeves, and collar. There are also (at minimum) under collar and front facings. Then there's the way the pieces are sewn together and which lines get moved to size them up or down....  If you are lucky enough to have a pattern with which to start, then you still have to carefully measure your model to make sure that the pattern fits in all the appropriate places. You might think that if you are a size X in ready-made clothes, then all you have to do is buy a pattern for size X garments and they will fit just the same. However, consider this: When you go clothes shopping, does everything you try on in a size X actually fit you? No. Because there is no such thing as either an absolute standard size X pattern or an absolute size X body. 

The next consideration for the pattern is the material for the piece. There are MANY issues with my material. For the purpose of pattern fitting, the biggest one was thickness. The final pattern had to accommodate the thickness of each of the components (sleeves, front, back, collar, etc.) so that Dave would have the ease to move in the finished coat, but it also had to be tailored enough so that he wouldn't be overly hampered by the bulk of it.

Right off the bat I was at a disadvantage because I had no coat pattern. I had a sketchbook containing a "pattern" of an original bison robe coat, i.e., a not-to-scale line drawing of the various pattern pieces with no suggestions on how to measure for them. I had several photographs of the coats worn by Kurt Russell in the Hateful Eight, I had photos of coats made by other craftsmen, and I had a womens' wool coat of my own whose lines I liked. The only true "pattern" I had was the one I use to make Dave's Hawaiian shirts. In my mind, I had a fuzzy image of how I wanted to combine the various elements of the coats in the photographs with the design of my wool coat to make a unique garment. To give me a leg up, I used the shirt pattern for the basic shape of all the pieces. Like I said--garment patterns are complicated and it's hard to tell which edges have to be which lengths in order to sew them together. Collars, facings and sleeves are not as straight-forward to resize as shoulders and sides are. 

It took three days of futzing, changing, and modifying to come up with a first draft pattern to use for the muslin. I had Dave try on my old wool coat for fit, and I made notes for where it needed to be adjusted for him. Then I traced the pieces of the coat (without taking it apart because I really like that coat) and added in the adjustments for his body. Finally I overlaid those pieces with the shirt pattern as additional validation that I was on the right track. When I was satisfied, I cut and sewed the muslin. 

For those unfamiliar with the term, a muslin is a test garment made from muslin or some other inexpensive fabric to test the fit of a pattern. I chose heavy canvas for my muslin to simulate the drape and movement of the finished coat. I lucked out in my choice of canvas fabric from WalMart--the only place in Polson left to buy fabric now that the local quilting store closed--in that it had a stripe pattern and the stripes in the finished muslin gave me a visual reminder of the direction of the grain of each piece. More on grain in the post on cutting the actual hide.

I finished my muslin at 8:00 pm last night, and when Dave tried it on it fit perfectly. There were a couple of places where I needed to extend the length of a piece so it would fit with another piece sewn to it, but those are quick fixes easily made today. The fit and drape were the biggest issues, and they worked out. Was it luck? Skill? A combination of both?  I am not silly enough to think it was all skill, but I'm not falsely modest enough to lay the win entirely at the feet of luck either. It was a good day.