A Ten Coat divided by Two

I have been a bit fired up recently while making all the Six Trousers and Five Trousers over on the Tennant Suit blog.

They all started out as practice runs before making the Ten Suit Trousers, but I have ended up with half a wardrobe of some of the earlier Doctors.

So I have decided to have a go at making a Five Coat to go with my trousers. After all the work I have done on the Ten Coat, making a Five Coat should be a lot easier as there is much less to it. The only part I am daunted about before hand is the red piping as that will undoubtably have to be sewn by hand, but I am sure once I get to it and start knuckling down, it won’t be as bad as I thought.

Looking back, I have always wanted a Five Coat, right from when Peter Davison was playing the part in 1982. I suppose it was the first item of cosplay I ever wanted, though at the time I’m sure it wasn’t called cosplay.

I was quite taken with the simple style of the coat and I tried to find something similar without success.

I went several times to the King’s Road in London where there used to be a number of vintage clothing shops to try and track down something even of the same style. I wasn’t expecting to find the exact same coat, but maybe something that some red piping could be sewn onto.

Each time I came home a disappointed teenager and was very glum.

Haberdashery from REAL shops!

I thought it was a good time to sing the praises of some of the vanishing haberdashery stores that still survive, despite the onslaught of the internet.

Don’t get me wrong, the internet is a great thing and makes the world just round the corner, but it has also stolen foot-fall trade away from some of the smaller retailers that stock some of the more unusual and diverse items.

Haberdashery has in recent years been doubly hit. As we have progressively moved away from a society that at the least would mend-and-make-do, and at best sew their own clothes from patterns to a world where clothing designer labels rule and throwing away when things go slightly out of fashion, the call and need for stores that sell a wide ranges of fabrics has become redundant.

Despite this, there is a thriving range of independent haberdashery stores out there - if you know where to look.

Designer label

When I did my Five Trousers recently, I ordered the fabric from Spoonflower, who can print any design you can come up with onto material.

When my order arrived it was neatly wrapped in tissue paper with a compliment slip that was the Spoonflower logo, but it was printed onto fabric! Which I thought was kinda cool touch (see right).

It seemed such a waste to just throw it away, I thought the the best way to use it was to use it as a clothing label in my trousers, as a little reminder of where the fabric had come from.

I didn’t want to hide it away at the back of the trousers (I was also worried it may get worn), so I put it in the front to one side of the fly, sewn into the curtain (see left).

And having done that I got to thinking that maybe I should have a label too!

I did an internet hunt and found a company called Able Labels who can do fabric clothing labels in short runs (most wanted 1,000 plus) at not too bad a price. I designed it in photoshop and kept it to a single black and white design to bring it in on a budget. I sent them a test jpeg which they wove for me and the result was pretty good!

Made to measure

I have recently finished making a Tennant Coat for a friend, Justin Monk, who lives in Canada.

You may recall he was the subject of the first Me And My Tennant Suit, having made his current suit from the JoAnn fabric (with which I am very close to finally making my own suit). He had gone through two Tennant Coats along the way.

As a footnote I mentioned he had a new one in the pipeline. Well I had that on good authority, since I was making it for him!!!

Before I trusted it to the couriers I took these pictures to share with everyone.

I made the coat from the Malabar fabric I used for the MkII and Mk III, as it is much more economic than the Alcantara. The colour is not match a perfect match, but it photographs looking very much like many of the publicity pictures of the real coat, so is a good substitute.