Constructing my Black Widow Coat Toile

You may have seen my previous posts about my Black Widow Coat toile, I took a break but today I have been continuing from where I left it.

Now that my pattern pieces were cut out I was able to lay the pieces out so that I could see exactly where each piece goes.

The first thing that I did was join the horizontal strips of panels together.

Then I started to join all of the larger panels together.

 While doing this I had to make sure that the seams matched in order to get a consistent line.

One problem I can across when doing this was that the end of one piece overhung and I could't get it to fit properly.

When looking at the reason for this problem I noticed that I had added seam allowance to the piece where I didn't need to.

 To correct this I took of the seam allowance on my pattern piece.

I then continued to join all the panels together.

I did the panels on the back and the other front too.

I pressed all the seams open.

I then joined the two fronts and the back together, making sure that the seam lines matched.

I then top stitched around all of the seam lines in the spiderweb paneling.

Whilst top stitching I sampled two different ways of ending the stitching.

The first way was back tacking.

The second way was pulling the thread through to the other side and knotting it on the wrong side.

I prefer the second way of doing this so this is how I will be doing it on my final garment.

I then sewed the shoulder seams.

Next I constructed the sleeves.

I added the sleeve facing and added the retaining row too.

I then sewed up the sleeve.

I then inserted the sleeves into the main body of the coat.

Another problem that I have come across is that the bottom seam line doesn't continue onto the other half of the front.  To correct this I need to create another panel.

I am really pleased with the outcome so far and feel that I will be able to do this part of the manufacturing process without any major problems for my final garment.

A further adaptation that I would like to make is to add pockets, this is something that I will look into next.