The Coat Is Finally Taking Shape Victorian Coat Progress

I'm still here. I've been embroidering through the winter. It's been a while. Here's how we're doing. This is panel number four of seven. So last time you saw me, I had two panels complete and a third one had just arrived partially done with all my things in my new place. And now we're nearly done with four. As you can see, I've got just a few of these flowers left to sew on and then we'll be finished with this panel. So while I do that, I'm going to show you a montage of just some shots I took getting to this point. There is one thing we have to address before I go any further. I'm a long way in with this that's something I've been kind of avoiding. If you look closely at these panels I've been embroidering, can you see how kind of bubbly this is? It doesn't lay flat and that's making me a velvet and the cotton underneath have stretched differently or worked against each other. The method for embroidering on velvet like this is you stretch the cotton backing on the frame first and then you sew the velvet on top. Despite the fact that I followed the instructions to the letter, when I take the panels off the frame, especially with one as big as this one, the cotton has been stretched out and the velvet hasn't because it was just sewn on top. So that's what gives you this kind of bubbly effect you can see in this. So never fear, I have a solution. If I turn these panels over and cut around the motifs, you know cut the cotton as much as I can of the cotton off the back, it should mostly solve the problem. That's going to change how sturdy these panels are because this is not your average crushed velvet, it's a very sturdy velvet and this is a long coat and we don't want it to be too heavy. So I think it may not be as stupid an idea as it sounds to start cutting cotton. So what I'm going to do, this is a complete experiment on only four years embroidery, I'm going to take one of the bits that are the most bubbly like this piece here and I'm going to just snip the cotton at the back and see whether it makes any difference. I'm hoping that if this is a truly terrible idea, that I can just kind of sew this bit of cotton back together again quietly on the back. But this is important to me, as we know it's important to me to show you the real story and not ask myself if there's a better human who does it expertly every time, you know. This channel is not about how fabulous I am, it's about what we all can do. So I'm just cutting around where the embroidery is to see if it makes any difference to her and it does. Look what happened when I pulled it out like that, it's actually a bit better, I think. Can you see? I think that looks smoother, she said hopefully. I know I do think that's taken some of the tension off and that's now sitting flat in a way that that bit isn't as smooth. So I'm gonna continue, I didn't think I would end up doing this, but I'm going to continue taking as much of this cotton off the back as I can and also take this opportunity to cut these panels out ready to assemble the coat. But I'm really glad if that is working as well as I think it is. It saves my bacon and if I do desperately need something else to support the velvet, I can always put another layer of something behind it. Obviously I have to be very careful not to snip the velvet. Once I'm in the middle it's hard. Sometimes you just gotta improvise and that has to be okay. Well that took a while but as you can see it's looking pretty amazing, much better, much better than before. Here's the back cut as close as I could to all the stitching and this is my mock-up you remember from 2023 I think I made this and I can pin each panel on top of the mock-up so you can actually see how far along we are. You can see I've done the front and the sides and not the back. I've pledged to do the collar, the sleeves and the back last. Why? The iconic picture of this coat is the picture of the back so what made sense to me was that I would get really good at the embroidery on the front and then do the back last. So we've got collar pieces to do, the two over sleeves, the under sleeve doesn't have any embroidery and these two sections here. This piece here and this piece here and this here and the same here this side will all be a cream cotton satin. See that's a pretty darn good match right there. So you can see we're more than halfway. I really love seeing it like this on the mannequin for the first time. It's just incredible how much time has gone into this and how doable it is to do even a very ambitious project if you've just got the patience. So my next job is to begin on those back panels, got first of those going on the frame now and I think it's time we ought to sew these panels together. If you've ever tried to sew or press velvet you'll know that it is not a quick or easy task. But for now, enjoy.