My favourite make: my Watson jacket. And a give-away!

Last november I tried something completely different decided I would make my own winter coat. I had only been sewing for a couple of months, but I figured I would make it work with the help from Gertie's book and Sew-along for the Lady Grey coat.

 I fell in love with the Watson jacket from Papercut Patterns the moment I first laid eyes on it. I wanted to make it out of red wool, since I don't often wear red and I wanted my jacket to be a statement piece. I spent a couple of hours in the fabric store in Rotterdam trying to decide if I should go with a solid or print lining. The ladies in the store wore rooting for a lining with print, but in the end I decided to stick with my gut feeling and choose a solid black lining. Which I'm soo glad I did!

I felt that there were a lot of pattern pieces to trace and cut out. Now, with a little bit more experience, I don't think it's that bad, but last november it felt like a massive task. 

I decided to try some couture techniques on my jacket. So I used horsehair to give the collar and the jacket front lapels a bit more structure. 

I followed Gertie's advice and let my horsehair soak in water for 24 hours first. It does smell very weird in your kitchen afterwards, like a sweaty horse or something.. Then I used pad stitching to attach the horsehair to my jacket front. A lot of handstitching, but soo worth it!

The horsehair gives it a nice firm shape

For the collar you have to determine the rolling point and then steam and attach it to a form, so that it will keep it's shape nicely, (details found here). I'm glad I took this photo since it was pre-blogging for me. In the end I wish I had cut the top collar part a little bit bigger, so that the seamline would roll towards the undercollar. Now you see the seamline quite well, which I'm not completely happy with. 

A work in progress..

The result

I also wanted to make bound buttonholes (another first) and tried them out on a scrap first. After my first attempt I was really happy and started on my jacket piece right away. This was a bit scary, because they have to line up horizontally and vertically. And they all have to look nice offcourse! I even made bound buttonholes for the buttonholes where I sewed the button on, so you don't really see them, but I know they're there :) 

Only one side is functional

 The lining went in smoothly, I silpstitched the lining to the shell by hand at the sleeve.  

Overall the instructions are great and even if you're a beginner, this pattern is do-able if you follow the instructions and look some terms up every now and then! I had Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing close by at all times. And the Sew-along was super helpful aswell.

What happens in our house while Jonathan is taking pictures

I wore my jacket to Lladybirds meetup in NYC last march and Lisette from What Would Nancy Drew Wear was super sweet and let me borrow her picture from the meetup!

Photo taken by Lisette

Now for the super exciting part....
To celebrate my 100th Bloglovin follower I wanted to host a give-away. And Katie from Papercut Patterns has suuper generously offered me a Watson jacket to give-away to one of you guys! 

Just leave me a comment and I would love to know what kind of fabric you would like to use for your version of this amazing jacket! She ships internationally so anyone can enter! Just make sure that I can contact you when you win (blog or email). 
The give-away will be open until October 4th and then I will randomly pick a winner! Yay!
Update: Thanks for all the comments! The give-away is now closed, I will announce the winner tomorrow!

Lazy doggies