Inspired 1900's Bicycle coat

Today I have some photos of my completed grey wool blend inspired bicycle coat to share!

It was definitely a journey, I never made a tailored coat before and same goes with historical outfits,

I'm still new to all of this and what is acceptable to do and where I get my information from.

However, I enjoyed making this inspirational coat for my Edwardian frock. I had planned this tailored coat for an event that would happen soon, so I had a little bit less than a week to finish this. So I did! I managed it all just in a mere couple of days (7 to be exact).

 I did the patterning in a couple of days and used a 1950 blouse pattern as I didn't have much time to make an accurate pattern in such a short amount of time, the sleeves however I got drafted a pattern from scratch using "the keystone jacket and dress cutter"

I think it turned out pretty well for seven days of work!

The idea for this coat happened because of the fabric I still had laying around and wanted to make a matching set that I have seen many times on the drawings for the 1900th century. Some of them are coloured but most of them are either grey or dark brown, and as I still had some fabric left from the skirt I made last year I thought a matching coat would go splendidly with it!

So I went through my stash to see if I had a nice lining for this coat as well as 60% wool blend for the outside of the coat and it's itchy! I used a lining fabric with black striped in it to give the lapels some more presents and also reduce the itchy wool on the inside of the coat!

I designed this coat without doing any deep research towards references this time due to time. I looked up 1890/1910 coats and my eyes fell on this bicycle coat. I know you are supposed to wear trousers underneath that or a skirt you can bike in but to be fair, I had no time to make those! 

However, I did make a quick sketch on paper on what I wanted to make with my fabric samples.

The part I was most excited about was the sleeves, they are big and puffy and something I have never seen before! I used a pattern description from the book " The "Keystone" jacket and dress cutter. A treatise on jackets, dresses and other garments for women by Hecklinger, Charles." It helped me a lot to make the sleeves how I have seen them on the drawings! But perhaps next time I shall make them better as they still seem to be slightly too small for the bicycle coat.

I made a mockup for this with the 1950 blouse and adjusting it and the sleeve, unfortunately, I haven’t documented the mockup so I can show you only the patterns!

The bodice pattern was cut out twice. The wool side for the outside and the black striped print for the inside lining. Once I cut everything out I had the outside and inside layer placed on each other wrong sides facing each other and pad stitch them together.

 Once the fabrics are pad stitch together the fabric pieces can now be handled as once piece, so you don’t have to make two coats and fuse them together at the end separately.

Here I also made a mistake with pad stitching the front together first. I proceeded to take out all the stitched and laid the front pieces right side on top of each other and stitch around the lines from the collar to where the buttons would be. Then flipped it inside out and topstitched the part of the lapels all the way down for a nice clean finish and then pad-stitched them together again. 

Once the front and the collar was attached to each other. I was really pleased with how it all started to come together so far!

One the front is in you start with doing all the darts on the garment and stitch them all together.

Now that everything was stitched together there where all lose edges inside of the coat that I wanted to keep neat and tidy so I decide to work them all away with an English seam.

did all the seams in the coat, even the one in the sleeves. When I fitted the jacket I noticed the back had a lot of room left and decided to take some of that out without cutting it. 

I pinned the part I wanted to be sewn so it fit me more and stitched the excess fabric down with a quick whip stitched so it lay flat inside of the jacket. I also did the same thing with all the darts.

After that, I started on the bottom hem of the coat by measuring where I want the coat to end around my waist. I made some lines to sew on an extra strap of fabric that I sewed on right sides onto each other.

I then cut off the excess fabric and flipped it inside so the raw edges are concealed and stitched it down with a whip stitch. 

With the sleeves, I had to sew those down as well along the edge on clean up the edges up inside with an English seam.

Unfortunately, I don't have documentation of how I instal the sleeves. What I did was box pleat the sleeves, in total there where five box pleats along the shoulder seam and the rest was tightly pinned in. 

With the bottom of the sleeves, I cut off the excess and rolled them up inside and whip stitched them down.

Before I did anything else I removed all the pad stitching from the jacket so I could make the finishing touches on it!

 The buttonholes I would have like to make by hand but due to time, I made them with my sewing machine! One cm from the opening, now that I had done it, I kind of regret that there so far away from the edge, next time I will make them half a cm from the edge. 

One the buttonholes were on the jacket I opened them with my seam ripper.

and then sew the buttons on the other side. And with that, your coat is done! 

Even though the process was pretty easy I didn't do the best job on this coat and would like to redo this same model again with adjustments! I would have liked it to make this coat even more tightly fitted as its still a little bit big for me around my waist! 

I wish the sleeves would come out bigger then I had planned them here. But I'm actually really pleased in the end how it comes all together with the skirt and blouse!

This was the coat all done! I must say I’m not fully satisfied by the lack of puff the sleeves and how short I made the sleeves, I will make another perhaps in the near future! 

However, I have learned a lot during this process and I am not even close to finishing this 1900th-century project! Will definitely making things like this, now it's onto creating the accessories!

Thank you for reading!