Yates Sew-Along: Lining your Coat

Today in the Yates Sew-Along we’ll finally be putting in the lining of our coats! The Yates uses a method called ‘bagging’ which reduces the amount of hand sewing and time needed to line your coat. It’s also pretty magical if you’ve never done it before, and honestly, even if you have! If you find you need extra help, we have two other bagged lining tutorials on our site, one from the Cascade Sew-Along here, and another more generic tutorial here. Sometimes it helps to see things more than one way. Let’s get started!

Lay out your shell with the right side facing up and align the lining on top of it with the wrong side facing up. Pin along the edges of the coat starting at one of the lower edges where the lining and facing meet up around the lapels, neckline, and back down the other side.

Stitch around the area you pinned. You can see above that we didn’t sew over the seam allowance on the front facing, rather we started and stopped at that point. That will make it easier to close the hole created by the bagged lining later on.

Grade the seam allowances of the lining, clip into the lapel Vs, and trim your corners and lapel points.

Align the lower edge of the lining with the lower edge of the hem facing matching center back and side seams and stitch across the seam line. The seam allowance of the edges should be folded over with the seam line flush to the edge of the hem facing. Unlike in the above steps, we do sew over the seam allowance here.

Here you can see a close up of both how your lining edges should align with the edge of the hem facing, as well as the hole left from this step. This is totally normal and we’ll take care of it later!

Now that the body of the lining and shell are attached we need to take care of the sleeve and sleeve lining. It’s very easy to get twisted around during this step so we highly recommend laying your coat out in the above configuration to start. A twisted sleeve will result in you not being able to turn your coat right side out.

Bring the sleeve and sleeve lining towards each other making sure not to twist the body of the sleeves. Fold up approximately 2-3″ of the sleeve lining.

Insert the sleeve lining into the sleeve; make sure that the front and back seams on the sleeve lining align with the front and back seams on the actual sleeve to ensure your sleeve isn’t twisted. Pin the lining to the sleeve and stitch around the seam line.

Open a hole in one of your sleeve lining seams approximately 8″ long halfway up the arm. This is the hole you’ll pull your coat through to turn it right side out.

Reach into the hole and slowly pull your coat through it until the entire coat is right side out. Make sure you don’t force it, if it feels stuck try giving it a wiggle and pulling less at a time.

Once your coat is all the way through you’ll have an unpressed sort of marshmallow looking coat. Before we press our seams we want to anchor the underarm points of the sleeve and lining.

Reach back into the hole in your sleeve lining and grab the underarm points of the shell and lining as shown above. We’re going to make a thread chain linking the two together. This will prevent your lining from sliding around inside your coat.

If you’ve never made a thread chain the video above from our Cascade Sew-Along should prove useful!

Your thread chain should be somewhere around 1 – 1½” long, just enough to allow movement without being so tight it restricts anything. Repeat for the other underarm.

Once your underarm points are chained, it’s time to sew up the hole in your lining. We handstitched ours closed but you can easily do this by machine as well, though it won’t be as invisible.

 

Now it’s time to press around your coat! You’ll want the seam allowance for anything above the breakpoint, i.e. the lapel, to roll to the outside of the coat, and the seam allowance for anything below it to roll to the inside of the coat.

At this point after pressing you can sew up the area where the hem facing and front facing meet.

 

Finally, topstitch around the coat body and sleeves. Along the front and lapel of the coat we stitched ¼” from the edge, and at the hem and sleeves,  1¼” from the edge. It’s possible that depending on the exactness of your lining and facing seams you might not quite be able to stitch at 1¼” without catching the lining, if this is the case, just adjust slightly based on the available width of your facings.

That’s it for lining our coats! All that’s left is our closures, so on Monday we’ll be showing you how to make covered snaps to perfectly match your coating fabric. See you then!