TL; DR – you’d think I was new at this the number of stupid mistakes I made.

I’ve wanted to make a shacket-type coat for a while. That’s what I was trying to do here, but it was an epic fail. I bought the Shoalhaven Shacket from Muna and Broad a while ago, but was too chicken to sew it. I don’t know why, exactly, since it’s a shirt and I’ve sewn loads of shirts and shirt dresses, but here we are.

I’m in a coat kinda mood, and had a lovely vintage plaid wool-like fabric that I figured would look gorgeous as a shacket. I wasn’t wrong. I love the final garment, but…

Holy shit, I made so many errors. First thing I did was to cut two left-front pieces, instead of two back pieces, which lead me to have to cut the top of the extra left piece, and then pattern match it to extra fabric to re-cut the top/neckline. Then I completely misread the front right placket instructions leading me to have to unpick a lot of sticking which was black and impossible to see. Then I noticed that some of this vintage (read: OLD AF) fabric was worn and there were holes all over the place, which I then had to patch up. Then I chose snaps because in my head I think snaps are easier, but really, they aren’t and why didn’t I just do buttons?

Except the weird thing is, I didn’t get really all that frustrated. I just sighed and kept going. It’s a freaking shacket, it’s supposed to look lived in and roughed up. So I just kept sewing and working on it, and now I have a transitional coat to go with my other transitional coat, with one already cut to try for the second time to sew a coat with lining.

Whew.