Back again

Just to catch up, here is the work I have done on the back of the coat at the weekend, then some further work I have done this week.

I showed last time the back being cut and the origami-like folds needed to create the vent and complex buttoned split.

Also stitched in at this initial stage was the lining, which wrapped around the folds of the vent in the back, fully lining it. This then carries on down to the hemline, giving enough lining material to run the length of the hem.

The buttonhole side of the split was then folded and pressed, and the buttonholes marked with my magic spacing tool. 

The picture here shows the back being pressed after the buttonholes and buttons were installed.

I then tackled the tailoring of the back. Marking the parallel darts either side of the vent is always difficult. The aim is to get them spaced so the sides are divided into three equal widths. It can be a bit hit and miss, as you need to allow for not only the spacing of the darts, but how much material they eat up in the process of sewing them and the seam allowance where the back joins the fronts.

New beginnings

CHAPTER ONE

After a morning of working on my suit, -click here to read about it- I made a start of the calico test for the coat. I started (as I usually do) with the back.

Although for my current coat (the Mk III) I pretty much had the design nailed, there was a subtly about the back split I had not got quite right.

I had originally noticed it in episode or two and tried to do an interpretation of what I could see, but only once I got close-up with the coat at Earl’s Court did I fully understand.

Basically, the back split has the option of buttoning up, with four buttons, the top one of which is always done up. I had seen the buttons in a couple of scenes where the back of The Doctor's coat had billowed out.

Before Earl’s Court I did not understand how they worked, so I just added a token row of buttons to the then Mk II coat, seen here.

I had long seen that the folds of the vent continued down to the hemline, but had these pleats butting up to each other rather than overlapping, so the buttons had no practical application - they had no buttonholes to join with.

This was because I had been miss-footed (yet again) by Honest Dragon, who had made their coat back out of a single piece of folded fabric. This SEEMS the obvious thing to do, but below the vent it restricts the ability to have more fabric to construct the pleats.

Luckily for the Mk III I had made it in two halves and had made the vent the deepest ever, so I was able to work out how to put it right, and did a 'quick fix' to the Mk III so at least the mechanics of it were correct.

The picture here shows the Mk III quick fix - compare it to the picture of the real coat at the top of this entry.

This is how the real coat works: the right hand pleat goes beyond the halfway seam and laps under the left side pleat. It has four buttons, equally spaced along its height. The left side pleat then has a strip of material on its inside which is attached and intervals. Between these intervals are button holes to correspond withe the buttons on the right pleat.