Halloween table runner

Pattern: none

Fabric: 1.5 yard 47" wide chevron print burlap

Haberdasheries: two tassels

Last year I started decorating our house with Halloween things I brought from my trip to the USA. I also bought some chevron print burlap there, and this year, I made a runner for our dining table.

I halved the burlap lengthwise, serged the two long strips together and ran the sides under my serger as well. I used to have lots of trouble with my serger, but I had it checked and oiled earlier this year, and since then it’s been running so smoothly! It had no problem whatsoever with this burlap, even using the same settings I do for knit fabric. After serging, I folded the sides over and stitched them down, and I hand sewed two black tassels onto the ends. Voilà!

Colette Lady Grey summer coat

Pattern: Lady Grey by Colette, modified

Fabric: blue canvas-like fabric

Haberdasheries: two snap fasteners, grey fusible interfacing

Mid-November… Interesting time to post a summer (or inbetween seasons) coat. Actually, this coat has been finished for weeks and I’ve worn it lots of times already, but I didn’t get around to blogging lately. We had a 17^th century event in Groenlo in late October and I was busy making lots of things for that, and also we just got a kitten!

I found this pattern on the Colette website when I was looking to buy the Ceylon dress, and since there was a sale going on, I got both. They were a more reasonable price than usually, although having to print the pattern (78 pages…) and stick all the pages together is a task I could do well without. Having done this a couple of times now, I think I will actually save myself the trouble get myself more printed patterns in future!

I love the design of this coat, with the large collar and tie belt, although I hate the 3/4 length, wide sleeves – I can’t believe most people actually make them like that, rather than modifying them. I have absolutely no use for a coat without full-length sleeves in winter, but I also don’t want one in summer, as I wear a coat for warmth. And I’m not going to bother with gloves in summer, either. So I made the sleeves quite a bit narrower, and full length. And while I was about it, I decided to add cuffs as well, with the same height as the belt.

Other alterations I made are taking off about 3 cm at the pointy bits of the collar, because I think it was a bit too wide and thought it looked strange, and lengthening the coat by 20 cm. I had been wanting elegant, longer coats for a long time, but as usually, fashion did not comply, so I had to do it myself again.

I used large snap fasteners rather than buttons and buttonholes, because I thought it likely that the buttons would just be visible besides the tie belt, and we can’t have that!