Long Coat Vent Lining ~ My Way

It’s sort of like pornography, I know it when I see it, but I don’t know what it is.

Marfy patterns do not have lining patterns so when it came to lining my coat I laid the back piece on the lining acetate. The center back is not on grain. Here’s how the pattern piece lay on the fabric:

I am used to making jackets, not coats. I am used to having the ease pleat be on the fold of the fabric. I am on my own.

So I cut the lining straight up the full width including the vent with 5/8 seam allowances and added width in the neckline, shoulder length and back length by just moving the pattern piece a bit as I was cutting.

Then: research and reading…where I got stuck and horribly confused! I was blaming my pitiful brain when, after a week’s misery and waking up thinking, “Oh, the vent is in the wrong direction”, I asked my pen pals and Els said: men’s vents open one way and women’s vents open the other way, unless you’re a woman driver and then the vent goes to the right so you can slide behind the steering wheel without the vent folding back under you. I’ll let her explain that. It would be a good post at The Sewing Divas someday.

But back to The Stitchery’s references which piled high but none addressed my particular problems with the coat. Most references just addressed jackets but a few mentioned that a fully lined long coat would have an unattached lining hem. OK.

So, here’s some of the more detailed references:

Timeless Tailoring, by Starr Hashiguchi

Palmer Pletsch jacket books had the best pictures and easiest to follow instructions.

I also referenced more than 10 other books, but nothing was on point for a full lining of a raglan sleeved long coat with a deep center back vent. These were good ones: Men’s Custom Tailored Coats by Stanley Hostek, and Classic Tailoring Techniques: A Construction Guide for Men’s Wear by Roberto Cabrera.

From Mr Cabrera I picked up this great way to stay a deep fold in the center back. It’s a keeper.

I was still mulling over how I wanted to construct the lining over the vent area and didn’t want to use the cut out techniques of traditional jackets shown above. This wool coat comes to the top of the knee and the lining is medium weight, not heavy, so I was afraid that the methods shown above would result in a torn vent from simple wear and tear sooner or later.

Then I found Gertrude Strickland’s A Tailoring Manual but her written instructions were beyond my comprehension. Palmer Pletsch I can understand on a good day, Strickland, well see for yourself:

from the prior page (129)

Lining The Vent and The Bottom of the Long Coat

Figure 84
If there is a vent in the coat at the back seam attache the upper lining in the same manner as in a long coat, except for the center back ease (1 1/2-inch-pleat) and around the vent at lower edge of lining.
a. The 3-inch ease at back was earlier basted in a 1 1/2-inch pleat down center back. Place pins the length of garment on either side of pleat to hold the lining into place.

OK, so-far-so good, except my ease is 5 inches deep and is based upon the depth of the vent.

Place a basting down the edge fold at the center back of garment and release the pleat.

OK, I’m getting really hazy already….

b.  1.  Measure the vent overlap “in inches” (her italics) on the garment being lined and baste from top to bottom edge of vent parallel to the folded edge.
2. Measure from the center back of the lining to the “right” the exact width of the vent width, “b”-1, and mark new fold edge. Transfer the center bacd pleat to the position marked to the right and baste the folded edge the full lining length.
3. the underneath folded edge “must” turn to the left on the inside of the lining.

end of page 129, on to page 130, shown above

I want to use this lining method and it made perfect sense in the picture. But I couldn’t process those instructions until I ripped out the wavy ease stitching a la Roberto Cabrera and draped it on the dressmaker’s form.

This is exactly what I want but it puts the fold over way on the left shoulder at the neck edge. To weird! Two friends had coats with this lining type but were really busy and I didn’t want to bother them for more info so I centered the fold at the back neck and angled the fold down diagonally down the back to the vent opening.

The blue line shows the true vertical and the red dash shows how the fold will go

The lining on the overlap will be hand stitched at the edge (even though the modern books say to machine stitch) and the lining on the underlap will be handstitched so that it lies just at the junction of the two. But before that stitching is done the hem will be put into the lining by a double fold.

This is what I wanted and somewhere in the back of my mind is a discussion of how to treat this ease fold but I couldn’t find it even after days of searching. Ahhhh, I wanted to have this stitched up and finished but am snowed in at the moment. There’s more photos at the Flikr album in the Lining a Long Coat set.

If anyone knows what this is called or how it should properly be done, please let me know. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do when on your own!