YEY - the final shape of my sweatercoat is becoming clear - after at least one half-made sweatercoat needed to be completely deconstructed, and after musing a very long time on how to begin the 2nd one...

Before I unveil the final construct, here are some notes on the finishing of the lower skirt, and fixing in of the rainbow part...

The skirt was sewn by hand to the bodice, as it was too thick layered to fit into my old school sewing machine.

I pondered a lot over which threads to use, but in the end the stitches were mostly hidden by the woolly-ness of it all.

It was a fiddle to attach the skirt to the big long green zip - I spent a while pinning and unpinning again, before finding the right positioning: the way it is sewn now leaves space for me to add an adjoining vertical border, to complete that part of the coat - to have the zip all aligned with creamy-white edging (which I'm using a big old house-cardigan for).

I love how putting on the skirt part unbalanced the whole garment, because this lef to me creating a new edging for the bottom.

The aforementioned house-cardigan was cut up to make this lovely strip....

...which I then sewed into a tube, and turned inside out.... then pinned this gorgeous sort of '70s/ Scandinavian border onto the bottom of it - to give it weight (and gorgeousness).

This border was sitting in a roll for years, never opened up. It was either my mum's or my gran's.... sewing this into a coat which will protect me all winter is very meaningful, as both my mum and her mum died many years ago. I love sewing their treasured colours and fabrics into my garments, which are sacred anyway!

The coat has a lot of small, managable aspects to finish now - wish me luck! 🥰

Happy sewing!

Clare.