Further adventures of the Duffle Coat - pattern problems

 It's been difficult to work on my Albion Coat when the weather has been so warm.  But the rains are trying to break through and it's now cool enough in the mornings to light the woodstove until the sun is high enough to heat the house.  

So I'm spending that half an hour of coolness between the time I light the fire and my coffee is finished brewing and ... what's a good way to say "getting drunk" without it sounding like my coffee is boozing it up at 6am?  Anyway, I'm spending that time working on my Duffle Coat.

The worst part so far was cutting up the paper for the PDF pattern.  There is so much wasted paper in this pattern (and yes, I checked the measurement to make sure it was printing the right size).   It's especially noticeable after working on that free PDF pattern for my cloak where I didn't have to cut up any pieces of paper.  Here, I'll show the difference.

The pattern on the left is from the cloak, the one on the right is from the Albion Duffle Coat.  Both are formatted to print on North American or Metric paper, and yet here we are.  So much wasted space on the right one.  I feel like they could have reduced the paper by almost a quarter by doing better with the margins.

Another thing I don't like about this pattern is that a lot of the crucial markings are on the join between the pages - often on or near where the four papers intersect.  It probably wouldn't happen so often if there were fewer papers to join together.  But it's crazy just how many markings (like the one above) are right on a join.  Almost to the point where one wonders if someone was feeling particularly evil (or simply lazy) when doing the layout for this pattern.  There is also a time or two when the dot/dash pattern for the different sizes is incorrect.

I probably wouldn't mind so much except this was expensive for me and the free pattern I just did was so much nicer to work with.  

There is also the option to print it at a print shop, but maybe I don't know which shop to go to, because the quote to have it printed on one large piece of paper was more expensive than buying a paper cutter.  So I bought a paper cutter.

Now that the pattern and fabric are cut out, I'm having a lot of fun learning about this double-faced cloth.  

I've decided not to line this coat and try my best to make it more like the duffle coat of my memory.  So the pattern side is inside and the black side is outside.

This might be a mistake as the pattern side is smoother and tightly woven whereas the black side is a more open twill fabric.  

I'm out in public mostly during the day, and winters here are foggy and white, so having a dark colour actually shows up better most of the winter.  If I was out at night, I would want brighter colours, but they get so dirty quickly.

I'm also going to try to make this reversible if possible.  This requires some further adjustments to the pattern.  

I've removed the inseam pockets and I'm doing a combination of construction techniques from version one and version two of this pattern.  

But I think it's meant to be because the local book sale was back this summer and while looking through the sewing books, I opened a random book to exactly the page that tells me how to work with this pattern.  It's a big thick Vogue book and I think it's going to be great for filling in the gaps in my sewing knowledge.  

What I see most is that I have permission to treat the two layers as if they were separate fabric - almost like flat-lining.  This is good because my sewing machine foot only goes so high and four layers of this fabric is basically like sewing eight layers of a heavy wool blanket - only without the squish factor.  

Click here to read more blog posts about my duffle coat adventure.