The Finishing Details

The details are not the details.  They make the design.  

~ Charles Eames

The rain coat is finished - yay!  :)

It is my first lined coat, so I found the details of finishing the lining really interesting.  First, consider the sleeves:  As you can see in this picture of the coat turned inside out, the lining (with the 1/2 inch folded over) is actually the same length as the sleeve:  

But the instructions had me whip stitch it approximately one inch inside the sleeve, like this:  

Apparently the excess folds over and allows for some ease in the sleeve:  

I did make one embarrassing mistake.  When I was working on the bottom hem of the laminate fabric, I did my stitching on the inside.  See how nicely my stitches line up with the inner facing?

Unfortunately, the outer facing is narrower than the inner facing and so my stitches look quite odd on the outside - the "step up" that you see below in the hem, should be around 1.5 inches closer to the center seam, to align with the outside facing edge stitching...  :(

Ah well...  If I wasn't so paranoid about leaving holes in the laminate fabric, I'd rip it out and re-do it.  I'll just have to hope that the 3-year-old boy doesn't notice!  ;)

Next, the instructions had me do the lining bottom hem the same way as the sleeve lining hem - I pulled it up and whip stitched it to the laminate about 1 inch away from the bottom of the rain coat:

Then I folded it down and whip stitched the little open side seam.  Again, apparently the idea is to allow for ease on the inside.  

The very last step was to open up the center back basted seam - providing one last bit of ease inside the coat:

And that was it!  I thought all those little bits to put ease into the lining were really interesting.  

Voila!  The finished coat:

Of course, the REAL picture will be my friend's young son modeling the raincoat - stay tuned!  :)