I sewed the lining to the exterior using the "kissing elephant" technique.
At the time, the sleeves were quite long for me, so I decided to use a greater seam allowance to eat up some of the excess length. This would later come in handy, as I didn't pre-wash my fabrics...
I decided I would use Canadian buttons on my Pixie Pea Coat:
Canadian buttons have two slots, through which a strip of ribbon or webbing is threaded. The webbing is then sewn to the garment. This has several advantages over traditional buttons:
the thread holding the button to the garment (via the webbing) is less likely to wear out from use
the button has more manoeuvrability (the webbing should have some give), allowing easier manipulation for fastening and unfastening
if the threads holding the webbing to the garment should break, the webbing may retain the button (preventing the loss of the button), especially if each button is secured by its own piece of webbing, which is folded on itself (raw edges), creating a thicker section that the button cannot easily slide off
repairs are simpler (less fiddly to sew the webbing to the garment; vs sewing a button and shank)
My sewing machine has a "one step" or "automatic" buttonhole function, but I didn't have the correct foot to make use of it, so I ordered one. While waiting for it to arrive, I decided try eyeballing a buttonhole, and generally test out how I might do my buttons:
It's not pretty, but I proved to myself I can do it! This practice also showed me that the cotton herringbone webbing here wasn't the best choice for this project. I decided to make my own webbing using the same cotton canvas used on the coat's exterior.
When my buttonhole foot arrived, I learned that my buttons were too large for the foot! I played around with the automatic buttonhole options (I like this "keyhole" shape!) but ultimately decided I would make my own buttonholes.
The coarse weave of the canvas gave me a hard time drawing on the fabric with anything other than mechanical pencil--but even this was difficult to see when it came to sewing the buttonhole. I decided I would "draw" the outline with a contrast thread, and chose a coordinating thread for the buttonholes themselves.
I drew the centre line in pencil, centred the line on the presser foot, then moved the needle position over. I stitched an outline in a contrast thread. Then I switched to coordinating thread and bartacked the top and bottom (short edges of the buttonhole).
To zigzag the long edges, I centred my fabric on the contrast thread. When I reached the short edge, I wiould would recenter the fabric on the centre line, adjust the stitch width to be the width of the entire buttonhole, and make a few stitches that way.
I opened the buttonhole by stabbing one end with a seam ripper and gently pushing forward until about the middle, then removing the ripper and stabbing again from the other end. (I've also heard that you can stick a pin at the far end to prevent accidentally seam-ripping through your buttonhole.)
I made many butthole/buttonhole jokes along the way.
Sewing the buttons was also tricky, and I didn't end up positioning them perfectly.
I wanted to centre the buttons on the correct place, but wasn't quite sure how to accomplish this. The buttons and webbing are so thick, I ended up underestimating how much webbing would be used up travelling through the button slots.
(Also: I was quite concerned that I might not keep track of which side was which, so I wrote "holes" on the buttonhole side and "buttons" on the other, using pencil. These didn't wash out completely.)
Thus my buttons aren't exactly aligned with the buttonholes. (The blue line was supposed to be centred on the button position on the garment; but I have to slide the button up the webbing to get it to match the hole on the other side.)
But since the webbing allows for some give, I don't think the effect is too noticeable when the garment is done up.
With the sewing complete, I washed my coat.
This showed me importance of pre-washing fabric when making garments--especially cottons, and especially cotton canvas!
Where the bottom hem had previously come down significantly below my fingertips at rest, it now only only came to my thumb. And while the sleeves had previously ended at my wrists, they now ended nearly two inches higher.
This is actually still a pretty useful length for me: I actually enjoy 3/4 or 7/8 -length sleeves. But when I raise my arm, the sleeve slides up my forearm quite a bit:
Thankfully, I had used a large seam allowance when sewing the interior and exterior sleeves together, so I had a plan.
