Much as I love my Sapporo Coat which I made last year, I felt that I needed a more classic colour and style to wear too. I searched long and hard through pattern books and online, reading blogs and looking at instagram images and eventually settled on the Oslo Coat from Tessuti Patterns.
I bought a beautiful charcoal wool/rayon blend from Centrepoint fabrics, which luckily for me me was in a closing down sale. The pattern was bought and downloaded, then assembled over a couple of days when I was home alone - it's about 100 pages to piece together.
Preparation of the pattern pieces also took a couple of days - there is the actual coat fabric, lining and interfacing to cut out, notches and tailor tacks to be done and interfacing to be adhered. I need to remember too that notches work well in some fabrics and I don't need to tailor tack all the markings, the wool would have been a perfect example of this.
The pattern itself is very detailed, one cannot fault Tessuti for their instructions. My only gripe (and I have seen others comment on this too) is that it is hard to see the photos clearly because of the dark fabrics they have used. I have found Tessuti patterns to be very accurate for my size, so based on my measurements, I made the size 8 without any adjustments. I love the length of the coat, though possibly I could have lengthened the sleeves by an inch or so. I have read that a lot of people found the pocket placement too low, but I think it's pretty good on me. For the record I am about 5'8". Sewing the pivot points, was a wee bit tricky, and by the time all the coat was assembled, there was a wee bit of weight to manouvre through the machine.
Lining is a grey and white dotty acetate, and the sleeves a grey bemberg - guess who misread the pattern requirements and didn't buy enough dotty fabric. I made little tether chains to hold the pockets in place and added a ribbon loop for hanging purposes if required. Lots of button holes were practiced on scraps, before sewing the real version. My machine has a few different styles to make and I chose the round end button hole. A plain black button from my stash finished it off.
Judging by this predicted weather forecast, I have finished it just in time to enjoy wearing it and stay warm and cosy. Miss B has also hinted that maybe next year when she's at university, a coat like this may be useful - guess it's a winning style.
