Jen's Camo Cortland Trench

One of my favorite things about this pattern is it feels a lot more wearable for everyday for me than a traditional long, belted trench. I live in a constant state of partial dishevelment and popping my Cortland on makes me feel put together in a way that doesn’t feel disjointed from my reality. It’s the perfect amount of slouch + structure for me!  

I made this Cortland during the instruction phase of developing the pattern to double check that we had everything clearly illustrated and right way round before things went to our pattern testing team. I like to take photos of each step as I sew to compare to the illustrations later so I need to make sure I have a two-sided fabric. I was all ready to sew but the fabric I ordered for this process hadn’t arrived so off to JoAnn Fabrics I went!

My local JoAnns didn’t have a ton of options but in the back of the store, on the lowest shelf I found this two-sided cotton twill. It was a great weight and my favorite color is green, so I went for it. I don’t think I would have imagined myself in a camo-print jacket prior to owning this but now that I have one I absolutely love it. That’s a good lesson to myself about trying things outside of my “comfort zone”.

I used pre-made bias binding to bind the insides of the trench and I really love how finished it looks. I expected that to make it take a LOT longer and, while it did add some time, it really wasn’t bad and the finish is just so nice even compared to a perfectly balanced serger stitch. 

I’m so excited that I can finally share my Cortland bc I have been wearing it quite a bit over the long development period. I’m also really glad we waited to release it though because having it available in both of our size ranges, in both print and pdf was really important to us. So get ready to see this coat a lot more the rest of the month!