A Ten Coat divided by Two

I have been a bit fired up recently while making all the Six Trousers and Five Trousers over on the Tennant Suit blog.

They all started out as practice runs before making the Ten Suit Trousers, but I have ended up with half a wardrobe of some of the earlier Doctors.

So I have decided to have a go at making a Five Coat to go with my trousers. After all the work I have done on the Ten Coat, making a Five Coat should be a lot easier as there is much less to it. The only part I am daunted about before hand is the red piping as that will undoubtably have to be sewn by hand, but I am sure once I get to it and start knuckling down, it won’t be as bad as I thought.

Looking back, I have always wanted a Five Coat, right from when Peter Davison was playing the part in 1982. I suppose it was the first item of cosplay I ever wanted, though at the time I’m sure it wasn’t called cosplay.

I was quite taken with the simple style of the coat and I tried to find something similar without success.

I went several times to the King’s Road in London where there used to be a number of vintage clothing shops to try and track down something even of the same style. I wasn’t expecting to find the exact same coat, but maybe something that some red piping could be sewn onto.

Each time I came home a disappointed teenager and was very glum.

Haberdashery from REAL shops!

I thought it was a good time to sing the praises of some of the vanishing haberdashery stores that still survive, despite the onslaught of the internet.

Don’t get me wrong, the internet is a great thing and makes the world just round the corner, but it has also stolen foot-fall trade away from some of the smaller retailers that stock some of the more unusual and diverse items.

Haberdashery has in recent years been doubly hit. As we have progressively moved away from a society that at the least would mend-and-make-do, and at best sew their own clothes from patterns to a world where clothing designer labels rule and throwing away when things go slightly out of fashion, the call and need for stores that sell a wide ranges of fabrics has become redundant.

Despite this, there is a thriving range of independent haberdashery stores out there - if you know where to look.

Designer label

When I did my Five Trousers recently, I ordered the fabric from Spoonflower, who can print any design you can come up with onto material.

When my order arrived it was neatly wrapped in tissue paper with a compliment slip that was the Spoonflower logo, but it was printed onto fabric! Which I thought was kinda cool touch (see right).

It seemed such a waste to just throw it away, I thought the the best way to use it was to use it as a clothing label in my trousers, as a little reminder of where the fabric had come from.

I didn’t want to hide it away at the back of the trousers (I was also worried it may get worn), so I put it in the front to one side of the fly, sewn into the curtain (see left).

And having done that I got to thinking that maybe I should have a label too!

I did an internet hunt and found a company called Able Labels who can do fabric clothing labels in short runs (most wanted 1,000 plus) at not too bad a price. I designed it in photoshop and kept it to a single black and white design to bring it in on a budget. I sent them a test jpeg which they wove for me and the result was pretty good!

Made to measure

I have recently finished making a Tennant Coat for a friend, Justin Monk, who lives in Canada.

You may recall he was the subject of the first Me And My Tennant Suit, having made his current suit from the JoAnn fabric (with which I am very close to finally making my own suit). He had gone through two Tennant Coats along the way.

As a footnote I mentioned he had a new one in the pipeline. Well I had that on good authority, since I was making it for him!!!

Before I trusted it to the couriers I took these pictures to share with everyone.

I made the coat from the Malabar fabric I used for the MkII and Mk III, as it is much more economic than the Alcantara. The colour is not match a perfect match, but it photographs looking very much like many of the publicity pictures of the real coat, so is a good substitute.

A Radiophonic night out

On Sunday I had an interesting Who-related evening out. I attended wearing my Tennant Coat, and received a little attention for it, though I did not get to take any new coat pictures.

So though it is not entirely coat related, I thought I’d still share a great evening out with you, as I was at least wearing the coat at the time!

On March 25th there was a new story on Outpost Gallifrey publicising a concert to be given by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop at The Roundhouse in the middle of May.

From a young age I was always very much aware of the work of the Radiophonic Workshop, and would often see the same names cropping up on the closing credits of Doctor Who or Blake’s Seven. 

In my eyes the players had become minor celebrities when Brian Hodgson appeared on Blue Peter to show how he had made the TARDIS noise (see right), and in a late 70s documentary where they showed how sound effects for Terror Of The Zygons had been created.

But I think it was the original radio version of The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy that I took real notice, as firstly their credit was read rather than written, so they became part of the dialogue of the programme; plus being radio, the sounds the Workshop created painted the minds-eye picture of the unfolding plot.

Journey’s (Land’s) End

The second part of my recent holiday took in Cornwall and the Penwith peninsula. The farmhouse where we were stay was only a few miles from Land’s End, where there is a permanent Doctor Who Exhibition.

I had seen a lot of pictures on the net from the recent Earl’s Court Exhibition, but none from Land’s End. So I set about putting that right.

The outside of the Exhibition is decked out like a massive TARDIS, and you enter through the lower part of the front door. It’s £4 to get in, which isn’t too bad, considering Earl’s Court was £9.

When you first go in, after passing a ticket collector, you walk up a low-rise, wide, curved staircase, along one wall of which is a display of photographs of the first nine Doctors.

At the top of the stairs is a panel introducing “New Companions”, but strangely not the tenth Doctor. I thought that a little odd.

The first costume displays you come to are an Angel (below left) from Voyage Of The Damned, and a boiler suit for a Lumic Work Technician (below right) from Rise Of The Cybermen/Age Of Steel. The latter not being the most exciting of costumes to begin the exhibition with.

Sontaran G3 Military Assessment Survey

I haven’t been posting on here much for the past couple of weeks as I have been on holiday down in Devon and Cornwall. Yipeee!

We had a great time and it was a good excuse for me to take in a couple of Who activities, one in either county, that I would not normally get the chance to visit.

Before setting out, I had taken a look on doctorwholocations.net and put in the postcode of where we were staying in Devon, and found that Hound Tor was relatively not that far away.

Hound Tor had been the main location for the classic Tom Baker episode, The Sontaran Experiment. I remember seeing it when it was first screened, and always liked it for its short story approach to a Who tale. Little two-parters don’t come along often, and it was the first I had seen in my Who watching experience, besides, anything to see the original Sontaran actor, Kevin Lindsey giving the seminal performance is always worth a watch.

I had always pictured the location used as a distant, remote spot, high in the Dartmoor hills, and not easily accessed. Though it is true the approach is through winding narrow roads, if I had thought about it, the BBC would not have picked it for an outside broadcast, video-shot episode, if they could not get their equipment within easy reach. A look on GoogleMaps shows the Tor and how close it is to the nearest road, as well as a car park close by (see below © google).

First full shots of new coat

At last! At last! The coat is finished and here it is!!!

Can’t blame me for having a little fun in my first time in front of a camera with it, eh?

I took these in a local underpass, which I think gives it a suitable grungy feel. Better than just in the back garden like on previous coats!

First a little sonic action, though again, I can’t find my new series sonic! It must be here somewhere - just don’t know where!

Click to enlarge

The a bit of action photography!

Home straight

Last thing to finish the main work on the coat is hemming the bottom.

After deciding how long I want the coat, it being a compromise between being too long and tripping over it all the time (as I did with my Mk I - hell that was too long!) and ending up too short, I pin the hemline I want to have.

I then press it along the hem to define the edge I will work to.

While I was researching The Competition’s Efforts, I noticed a couple of pictures showed people wearing their Tennant coats held open, to show the internal pockets. 

When they did this, the lining was hanging like a big bag and sagging badly in the middle (see left). I wanted to try and prevent this, so I sewed the lining’s vertical seam allowance to the seam allowance down the insides of the coat to support and secure it. I did this from around 6 inches below the armpit to 18 inches from the hem. This is a bit unconventional - I’m sure you aren’t supposed to do this, but it has also stabilized the position of the lining around the hem area, which I then found much easy to work with.

The hem is then laid out flat and I cut the lining level with the seam allowance of the coat hem (see right). At this point I need to check the circumference of the the lining and the coat match. If there is any extra, I just slightly take the vertical lining seam in a bit.

Getting the collar right - at last!

This is the one bit of the coat I think I am the most stressed about putting together!!!

Since the collar and lapels seam with pretty much the entire coat, any slip up could be far reaching, meaning I might have to re-cut right back to almost the beginning. If I had ruined a pocket, I would only have to remake that isolated part, not the whole coat.

That said, the first thing to do is set the under collar into the body of the coat. This will check that I have the collar the right length. Sometimes I need to adjust the pattern slightly to make sure it fits, so I have left cutting the collar until now, rather than when I cut the rest of the coat earlier in the week.

There is a tricky dog-leg seam to sew in each side which ends up below the collar, so I set these and ease the rest of the collar in across the back of the neck. This give me the first chance to really see how the coat is looking (see right). Looking good.

The pattern is cut a little generous around the collar, to give me some cloth to play with in case of crisis. I therefore adjust and mark the final collar size before stitching.

Setting the sleeves

One of the things I did earlier in the week when I had a blitz on cutting the fabric, was to quickly make a start the sleeves. I only sewed them together to get a head start, and now I am setting them in the coat body which has been assembled ready, I’ll recap all I did with the sleeves.

Sleeves are always one of those easy things to assemble, but if I haven’t done them in advance, can slow down assembling the coat.

I first cut the sleeves (see above left) in Alcantara. Notice the marks for sleeve apex and three parallel lines for the sleeve head formation. I also cut the lining using pinking sheers, which proved to be a sucessful exercise on the test coat (see above right).

Firstly I stitch the longer back seam and press it flat, but with all of the seam allowance folded towards the front of the sleeve. I then topstitch the seam, within 1 to 1.5mm away from the edge. The sleeve is then closed off by sewing the front seam, which is just conventionally pressed flat.

I am using the slightly adjusted pattern I did for the calico coat, which is designed to give a more roomy fit at the back, while still being quite tailored at the front.

These two photographs show what I mean: (left) you can see the sleeve is set in cleanly and is well fitted (right) you can see a series of puckers at the seam, which is giving it a fuller fit. To mimic this I need to adjust the level of gathering in the sleeve head so it is smooth at the front and across the apex of the sleeve, but allowing it to pucker slightly as it falls down the back of the sleeve.

Sum of its parts

Well, I have now finished ‘decorating’ (as I like to call it) all the main sections of the coat, and am ready to start bringing them together at last.

Before I do, here they are, and a little reminder of some of the details and features each has.

BACK

Capacity vent in centre of back; two top-stitched tailoring darts on each side of vent; four-buttoned slit with receiving buttonholes in enclosing pockets; lining integrally sewn at initial stage.

FRONTS

Welted pocket with separate pocket flap surface-sewn 1 inch above pocket; tailoring dart down centre; two underarm tailoring darts ending at pocket flap; four 28mm horn buttons along dart.

LAPELS

Orange Dupion flashed internal welted pockets.

SLEEVES

Over-stitched back seam; single stitched underarm seam.

Panic over a seam I did not know about!

Next thing to tackle, which took most of a day last weekend, were the fronts. Initially I thought this was going to be nice and easy, but then I had to go and make it difficult for myself!

I had long studied the coat, and thought I was familiar with every single seam and tailoring dart it contained. While I was writing a previous blog entry about the sleeves, I posted a cropped vserion of a picture to show the detail of top-stitching on the back darts (see above).

What I spotted in the picture - slightly to my horror - was that there are two tailoring darts in the front half of the coat, under the arms running down to the tops of the pocket flaps. 

I have tried to make it a bit clearer here (see above) by labeling the darts and seams.

I had long known that there was at least one there, but had only included it in my pattern when I got to the calico test coat, which I was just finishing at the time (I had noticed it not long after finishing the Mk III.)

I realized that in all the pictures I had seen to date, David’s arm had covered the back dart when seen from the front; and covered the font dart when seen from the back; I had never seen a picture showing BOTH darts together, until now.

Inside pockets - smoke and mirrors

My next sewing session on the Alcantara coat was a mid-week evening, so I kept it to relatively simple stuff rather than anything too involved. That I save for the weekends!

The work I had done on the calico coat was now paying dividends, as I could confidently storm ahead and start cutting the final cloth without the usual stages of cutting and adjusting as I went along. This time I would know they would all fit together right, pretty much first time.

In one evening I cut essentially the rest of the whole coat, bar the collar, which I felt needed special attention. I won’t show you all this now, but will reveal the cutting of the coat as I tackle the assembly of each relative section.

The first manageable part I decided to assemble were the lapel fronts, which although they are cut, don’t get sewn in until much later, but the inside pockets can be set now. It is so much easier doing it while the lapels are loose pieces of fabric: it is like sewing a demonstration or test.

The pattern is marked with the roll of the lapel and pocket positions, though the Sonic pocket is now canceled (see right).

I then transfer the pocket position from the pattern (see left) and mark it in tailor’s chalk; and attach the lower welt, which is made of interfaced orange Dipon fabric (see below - top left). The welt is pinned upside-down, rightside facing down. The back of the pocket is attached in the same way and the width of the pocket is sewn between the vertical chalk marks. I then carefully slit the gap between the two lines of stitching (see below - top right).

Work begins

CHAPTER TWO

At last, the moment I have been building towards for so long . . . I am starting to make my coat from Alcantara!!

Goes without saying I starting with the back, made even easier by the adjustments I have fed back from making the test coat. I am more confident about assembling it now, being still fresh from working in calico.