No Country for Old Women

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I'm too intimidated to enter a Chanel retail store, but I want a Coco Chanel-style couture jacket. My solution is to make one. This is extremely advanced sewing and my skills are anything but. I decided to challenge myself (or set myself up for humiliating failure) and document my efforts.


I lucked into some great fabric.












First, I needed to set up my work room. I recycled an old woodblock kitchen island top for a standing cutting and pinning table. Next, I repurposed a spare dining table for sewing. Then, I purchased a petite dress form for fitting and draping. Finally, my wonderful daughter gave me razor-sharp fabric scissors and a bagful of sewing room essentials: tracing paper and wheel, magnetic pin holder, ball-headed pins, one-inch grid pattern making paper, washout marker, etc.


Cutting and Pinning Table
Tracing Tools
Sewing Table

And then I read the pattern.

Sixteen separate pattern pieces, most of which require cutting two of each in both couture fabric and lining and/or interfacing. Suddenly, I was in no country for old women.

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