There needs to be an "other" category! Because I almost never buy ready-to-wear clothes, but I can do some damange to my checking account in a fabric shop. I can easily go into a fabric shop looking to just buy a piece of corduroy for some new pants and come out with fabric for two pair of pants, three shirts, and some cool buttons for a someday project. Granted the $40-$70 I can spend in one trip to the fabric shop isn't a patch on what some of the rest of you spend on a shopping spree, I do manage to get quite a lot out of my fashion dollar.
My big plan is for what will be a very elegant and wonderful, but painfully expensive winter coat, probably for next winter, as it is probably going to cost me about $300-400 in materials alone.
The coat I am making is a lot like
this except that it has
pockets trimmed with the contrast fabric, and mine will be in a tweedy plaid in shades of moss green, olive green, dark green, tan, and black. The contrast trim will be moss green velvet and I will make a co-ordinating hat in the velvet with soutache trim, and possibly a couple of peacock tips. I will probably do some soutache braid trimming on the collar and pockets of the coat, too. I have a considerable fondness for passamenterie.
My coat will have a slipper satin lining and a Thinsulate inner lining, because winters here in Kansas City suck.
Here's a back view of the same coat, but made mid-calf length.
I reckon this coat will be pretty much a long-term investment. A good coat can last for years and years, and since this is such an antique style, I won't worry about it going out of fashion, since it's already been out of fashion for about 100 years. All the sites that show versions of this coat already made offer it for between $400 and $700, so whatever I spend on materials will be a savings already on the ready-to-wear version, plus I will have the fabric and colors I want.
Thank goodness for my MAC employee discount or I'd be broke!
obsession.
