some more of my coat

Cindy had a post up the other day with a wonderful quote:
"A winter coat is a lot of work!"- unknown sewing blogger (from here)

Well, um, I agree. Here's my coat at the moment, from Simplicity 4109. Since it's unlined, I'm doing a hong kong finish with a twist. The pattern calls for topstitching all the seamlines, so after I fold the binding fabric from the hong kong finish under, I pin and then topstitch the seam when I would usually sew down the binding fabric just to the seam allowance. So that makes it a smidge easier.






I hope everyone had a wonderful new year! We had my parents over for a late lunch. I enlisted my dad to fix a broken dresser here, which was an opportunity for the sailor and him to break out the cordless drill and all kinds of other tools and whatnot. Then my mom and I took her dog down to the dog park:



You can see that our snow is slooooowly melting away! Now there's a small river in every crosswalk. Good thing I have some waterproof boots, you really need them right now.

On the wedding planning front, an Indian friend of mine brought some gorgeous white and silver bangle bracelets home from Kerala for me. In India women wear bangle bracelets when they get married, as its supposed to bring good luck, so all my friends at work (most of whom are Indian, from Hydrabad or Kerala) have been telling me all year that I really need to wear a few for my wedding. My friend decided to bring some back with her, and I'm very excited to wear them- they're really gorgeous and it will be sweet to wear something that my friend brought all the way across the world for me!

Would you believe that I still haven't picked out a dress pattern? My mom and I had a long discussion of the relative merits of various patterns I've been looking at, but I'm still undecided. At least there are still a few months to go.