Crystal's Heather Blazer

February 1, 2023

Another attempt at coat making for me this year! I've chosen to make the Heather Blazer by the Friday Pattern company, lengthening it to essentially make a long formal coat. The pattern is essentially a boxy blazer with a lapel and collar. It has a button fastening and patch pockets. It has 2 piece sleeves and its fully lined.

Jenny has some beautiful coating fabrics and I decided to go for her designer deadstock ex Laura Ashley wool coating in a deep navy blue. I then chose a bright, festive lining in the form of Jenny's winterberry cotton lawn and then just some burgundy anti static lining for the sleeves.

This pattern also required 2 types of interfacing. Woven and knit. I normally have the paper type of interfacing at home but Jenny provided me with some lovely interfacing that I plan to use with all future projects from now on. It's the Vlieseline interfacing that comes in woven and knit and in black and white. It's like fabric as opposed to paper with an iron on backing and is far more superior to the paper interfacing I'm used to. It gives structure where needed but doesn't leave a crisp handle to your garment.

I have made the Heather Blazer before - without any hacking and it turned out so well that I decided to make it again but as a longline coat. I went for the size medium and this still accommodated my growing baby bump. The adjustments I made were as follows:

I lengthened the pattern by 14 inches.
I graded the waist down by an inch on each side so 4 inches altogether to give some shaping to an otherwise boxy loose fitted blazer.

I also self drafted a back vent which took me an entire evening to figure out. It's funny how it looks so simple to create but it was a nightmare. It all started when I adjusted the pattern pieces only to add the back vent panel to the side seam of the back bodice piece rather than the centre back seam! I didn't have enough wool to cut them out again so I simply cut the vent panel (1.5 inch by 10 inch rectangle) and attached it to the bottom of the centre back seams instead. The lining got the same treatment.

I can't actually tell you how I then sewed the back vent together with the lining as I literally just sat at my sewing table for a good 2-3 hours playing with it until it sat right. It was quite a frustrating ordeal with lots of basting and unpicking, despite watching a few tutorials on the subject, but the overall look is now acceptable.

The fabric was lovely to work with. The wool cut out beautifully. I made sure to have a new blade on my rotary cutter. Both sides of the fabric could have been used as the right side. One side had a slight twill pattern and the other was plain. I went for the plain side although in hindsight I wish I had gone for the twill side as it was more of a brighter navy blue than the plain side which appears more black. I used a wooden clapper to achieve flat, crisp seams on the wool. This definitely avoided the dreaded bouncy seams associated with handmade coats. The cotton lawn was also good to work with and pressed well. The anti static fabric was very slippery and frayed a lot and to be honest my lining set in sleeves do have a couple of puckers but I had to choose my battles wisely!

The instructions are pretty straight forward and relatively easy for a coat. The only issue I had was with the hemming as it's all done on the sewing machine from the inside out so no need for any hand stitching. The Friday Pattern company does have an accompanying video tutorial on you tube so I watched that and hemmed away with ease thereafter.

The finished garment is beautiful both inside and out. It's fairly cosy because of the wool and is a great fit. Unfortunately the true colour of the navy wool is hard to photograph (and every minute white speck is magnified!) but hopefully you can still appreciate the photos I've managed to take.