Project: Coat Retool 2024

If it feels like it’s been forever since I’ve had a finished project to unveil, you would be right – turns out it’s been nearly a year! The funny thing is, this one has been finished since Christmas, but I’ve been so busy with, y’know, gutting a house and renovating it literally from the ground up to be able to work on nearly anything else (like taking pictures of the final product!) We may have moved in right after the New Year, but it’s only been in the last two weeks that I’ve got my sewing space in a more-or-less workable condition! Anyway, this particular project started last January when I was (as ever) browsing the racks at my local Goodwill, not looking for anything in particular, only to find something in a solid material with great potential Swarziness…if I could just manage to rework it to be less hideous.

In this case, a camel-colored 100% wool coat with a massive collar and weirdly rounded shoulders…major Asian granny vibes. However, I’m always up for a challenge (especially at a price point of just $7!) and was in the market for a lighter-weight coat (my only other option at the time was a Soviet behemoth meant for the Eastern Front!) so I got it home and started making my plan of attack.

The first step obviously would be to fix the shoulders – I haven’t quite found an exact match for what this style of shoulder seam is called (drop a comment if you know!) The overall look created by this cut was very lumpy (did I mention it came with shoulder pads?!) and unimposing , and as I’m not the most imposing guy to start with, I really wanted a more typical shoulder-arm transition.

I removed the sleeves to see how they were really constructed and realized I had a problem – it seemed like either way, I was going to have some material missing:

Either I could fill in the missing triangular space at the top of the existing jacket-style sleeve, or cut the sleeve into a less restrictive (lower curve) shape and then have to somehow make up the difference with the coat’s body itself.
Ultimately, I wound up going with the second option, but rather than try to work with the existing upper shoulder of the coat’s body, I decided to chop off basically everything above the armpits to create a yoked design and start from scratch! But where would the material come from?
Notice how the original coat was below-knee length, and the final coat is above-knee length? Waste not, want not – the material I chopped off the bottom half found a new home in the top half. Somewhere along the way I also removed the original collar and cut it down to a more manageable mandarin style. Naturally, at this point I was in the flow and so stopped taking in-progress pictures 😦
I also did a bit of light tailoring to the ‘princess seams’ on the front and back, in order to create a more historical (less bag-like) silhouette with a narrow waist and fuller skirt. I also created a ‘riding slit’ in the back and extended the cuffs using the material inside (creating a gap in the lining, and require making up the difference with some scrap lining material later).

While I didn’t start the project with any ‘character class’ in mind, the faux turned-back cuffs made me think of 17th century greatcoats (pretty sure that’s the term), so I started thinking of this as something of a GFFA pirate’s coat (a full 10 months before Skeleton Crew‘s release! In hindsight after I watched the show, I’m glad I didn’t stick with the popped collar look for this coat, so as not too seem too derivative of Jude Law’s character.)
So, what would an in-universe pirate’s coat look like? After collecting and scrutinizing all the examples of onscreen in-universe coats I could find (for this month’s upcoming Style Guide entry, naturally!), I knew I was already in the ballpark, but I wanted to add something for a little visual interest. I decided to add some vertical quilting to the yoke, as well as a woven tape accent all around the lower edges. However, one thing I knew needed to change was the color! I already had plenty of earthtone pieces in my closet, and I wanted something a little different – but still within the in-universe color palette. To help me decide, I made up a simple template and started making notes of colors I liked from my RIT dye recipe book that I already had the ingredients for. Most of the combos wound up reading closer to ‘Imperial doctor’ than I’d intended (I think due to all the gray), but one combination seemed to pop pretty well:

With my choice made, the pieces went into the dye pots (at lower-than-normal temperature, so as not to felt or shrink the wool!), then got rinsed and ironed flat. Since wool takes dye very readily, the final colors came out pretty much exactly as intended.

With all the difficult design decision-making complete, it was time to reassemble, which was fairly straightforward; the hardest part was tailoring and hemming the lining to reflect the changes I’d made to the shell, as well as keeping the added lining-extensions from popping out the cuffs, plus keeping the tape stripe details’ corners crispy.
Eventually, however, everything was back together! and I finally had something to wear and show off:

So there we go – a subdued galactic “pirate’s coat”! Obviously it needs at least some light weathering to make the details pop and bring out some character, but what do you think? The cadet cap is definitely not appropriate, so I guess the next question is – what kind of headwear should a pirate wear? ???

Thanks to my readers! Writing, photographing, and editing a writeup like this takes a lot of time and energy (no ChatGPT here!), so if you’ve enjoyed reading or have been inspired to try creating your own a pirate impression, please consider supporting my work via ko-fi, or with a small donation below! If you can’t give, please share this post or site with your friends! Thank you!