Christmas coat for my niece

This gorgeous wee creature is my niece Isla. I like to spoil her with with handmade clothes as I know her Mom appreciates them and they get a lot of wear. Plus she's so stinking cute, I get so much pleasure seeing her in things I made. And of course it's nice to have another model other than Maia!

I had a million things I wanted to make specifically for her, but not a lot of time before we left, so fabrics and patterns were lugged transatlantically with the best of intentions to complete them once we were there. In the end, I didn't have much time (especially to get to grip with different machines), so luckily I had 95% finished this coat before we left. All I had left to do was the buttonholes (by hand, ugh...) and the buttons.

This is another IKEA creation, with the blue flower side decorator weight cotton and the other side burnt orange cotton twill. There are orange fabric buttons on the blue side and blue and white polka dot fabric buttons on the other. After a couple of the earlier six button coats, I've decided that I like the four buttons more.

Like most of my recent coats, it is fully reversible. It has a peter pan collar, I swithered over a hood but thought that the more feminine fabrics (like the blue side) look better with a collar. I'll save the hood for the funkier / edgier or more whimsical coats!

There has been a fair amount of interest in the pattern for this coat so I finished the photo tute before we left, mailed it off with the pattern pieces to generous volunteer testers and have received good feedback. So again, all lugged transatlantically with the best of intentions. Then I remembered that people would want the hood pattern too (which I hadn't brought) and would expect that it would be included in the tute (which I hadn't done). Oops. So like all the partially finished Christmas clothes for Isla, they were then lugged transatlantically back home.

So my task list for this week is to finish Isla's clothes and post them back (transatlantically), make a hood and complete the tute, and work on my boy's version. All of this contigent of course to Jamie actually sleeping at some point when I'm awake...