a peacoat

Warning, super cheesy. ;-) Since most of my family has never met my sailor, I got asked the same questions quite a bit after we got engaged. "what does he look like again? who is this crazy boy you've been with for years?"

Sooo.... I talked him into getting a photographer to do an engagement photo shoot. It was pretty important to me, also- my photography professor talked all the time about photographs as your history, and how women photographers frame their relationships especially within their families, and being aware of how you, as a photographer, are interjecting yourself in a scene as opposed to being a passive observer when you're taking pictures of people you know. Seeing your personal history as you've photographed it and shaping your view of your life through pictures that you look back at. Yeah, women's college photography classes, exactly as you might imagine it. ;) I wrote about this a few times over the years ago on my non-sewing blog. Here's a quote I put up there, from my professor, about this:

"Photographs look so honest and truthful," she said. "But it all depends: All photos have the problem of interpretation. It's the person taking the picture who's doing the editing, not the camera. If you were writing in a journal or painting a portrait, you would be much more aware of the editing."

All of which is a long winded way to say that I really wanted some pictures of us together instead of the 3 or 4 snapshots we have. We had a wonderful photographer & went to the back bay wildlife refuge at Virginia Beach. I brought my camera, and for the most part we just walked around and the two people with cameras took pictures. ;)

Since I sew... well.... I had to make a new coat to wear. It's BWOF 08-2009-102, a double breasted pea coat. You can't really see it, but the lining is a BRIGHT turqouise silk. The buttons are mother of pearl, from an old coat from my grandma.




(this is a flash slideshow- it takes a little time to load, and you need flash in your browser to run it)

OK, enough silly pictures, on to construction details! I interlined the coat with black flannel and it came out super warm and cozy.



The front is interfaced with fusible weft interfacing. I made the pockets out of flannel, and made sure to put a back pleat in the lining so that I'd have lots of room to move around. The coat has princess seams that eased together really nicely with this tweed, and I actually managed to pull off the buttonholes on my sewing machine at home! I marked the buttonholes on freezer paper, ironed that onto the front, and stitched the buttonholes onto the freezer paper over the markings. Then I ripped it off. Viola, decent coat buttonholes from my little Viking!