| My Sinking Coat |
| 8th December, 2002, (continued), Tracie asked me which button I would prefer. She offered to just cover them with black satin or an acrylic style similar to the Peterman ones in style. She told me she was never able to get close up photographs of the film coat's buttons, so she has no definate idea of what they actually look like, or what they used on them. She has heard a couple of different takes on what type of buttons where used, but nothing definate. I decided on the buttons covered in black satin, being that to my knowlage the film coat's buttons where simply button form disks covered in black silk, and satin and silk look very similar, so that is the choice I made. As far the progress of the coat embroidery... Carla is not progressing as quickly as she would like due to the back collar being quite a challange as the flower in the center is very intricate and you have to layer the petalsjust so to make a three dimensional effect. Tracie is still shooting to having everything done this week but she wanted to give me fair warning that she is concerned about meeting the shipping deadline of Friday. She willof course do everything in her power to try and get everything done, but she is at her mercy right now so we must keep our fingers crossed that she gets it tweaked. She will be going over tomorrow to help her with the design work a bit and see if she can lend her some ideas maybe she hasn't thought of. Two heads are of course better than one and since this is the first time she has done embroidery on this scale she probably could use some encouragement. |
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| 9th December 2002, Tracie went over to help Carla work out the embroidery today, and they did get the problems resolved. I told Tracie not to worry with getting the coat fully completed by Friday, early next week will be fine. 11 December 2002, Carla expects to do a test run tommorow of the collar and cuffs on her wool, and mine will be right behind it. This means she will be finalizing my coat most likely Friday and Monday as she should have the coat panels tweeked for resizing and ready to cut and sew tommorow. (Tracie crosses fingers:) Tracie will be busy this weekend so she won't be able to work on my coat any. |
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| She expects she should be able to ship the coat by next Tuesday or Wednesday. She intends to send the coat Express Mail. |
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| 12 December 2002, Ok I just want everyone to know I actually had a dream about my coat last night.... now back to the coat construction. As far as what has happened today with my coat... all of the pattern pieces have been totally drafted and Tracie will sew the test coat together tommorow. |
| If it goes well and the fit seems right then she will cut mine right behind it. She is only going to do two decorative seams on the test coat as she doesn't think she has enough fabric from her wool t do all the seams. (On the original there are decorative seams on the front, back, under the buttons, as well as down the sides under the sleeves) If worst comes to worst she will just do the front seams on the test coat so the seams will still look even and she will not worry with the back since it is only a prototype. If Tracie decides to sell it she will make sure this is known to whomever buys it. Tracie also went to Carla's today and sketched the layout for the collar on the test wool. Tracie already layed her pattern piece over the Peterman Coat to make sure the collar was more angled down and not so rounded and got a second opinion from her assistant that it looked closer to the film's. Tracie will have some pictures of the test coat hopefully tomorrow evening. Tracie will be busy all day and evening Saturday, but Sunday she will be working on my coat all day. If all goes well she sould be wrapping the coat up on Monday and getting it photographed and ready to ship out on Tuesday. |
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| 15 December, 2002, Carla got the test coat embroideries worked out today, and she will be ready to stitch my wool tommorow as everything stitched out fine on the tests. She wil have to stitch the edge design free hand so that it will line up in the rounded shape and that takes some time to do. |
| She also had to spend most of Friday tweeking the collar designs to fill properly etc... Saturday was a non-work day for Tracie. On Friday she did baste together the front panels on the test coat and she did on decorative seam to make sure it looked alright and it seemed fine, but if she is going to get my coat finished and out, she is not goint to be able to complete the test coat, and just check measurements, etc... to make sure she adds extra room to make the coat somewhat bigger than the Peterman one and to give me room at the sholders, and to make sure it won't pull at the back. Everything seems to look good measurement wise so she will be cutting out my wool in the morning and should have it all stitched together and ready for the collar and cuffs by the afternoon. The lining is just a mirror of the wool, so she says that is no big deal. Tracie has no time to send a bunch of production pictures of the test coat since she will not be finishing it completelly. She will although snap some pictures of the collar and cuffs of the test coat when she gets a look at them in the morning and gives Carla the final ok to stitch out my stuff. |