Coats in Caribbean?

Yes coats in the Caribbean!  Hey guys I hope all is well. As some of you may know from reading my blog I am from Trinidad and Tobago. 365 warm days every year without fail; some with rain, some with more heat than can be desired but all days warm. All I ever want to wear are breezy dresses, shorts and vest tops. 

I had the opportunity to spent a considerable amount of time in London, UK in my early and mid  twenties and  ohhh how I enjoyed it! One complaint though; it gets way to cold for my Caribbean bones. I will be travelling to the UK once again in October for training and hubby is coming with me. It will be his first trip to the UK and we are both quite excited. So excited that I perhaps made a stupid decision without thinking it through. I volunteered to make us both some coats for the trip. It seemed a good idea at the time but now that I am actually doing some research into coat making I realise that it is a monumental task. If I could just turn back the hands of time a bit! I already bought fabric on Fabric.com and a coat pattern for my hubby. I must therefore take the plunge!

The fabrics

Mini houndstooth in tan for hubby

Close up on the tan fabric 

Option 1 for me, small dotted black grey and pink wool blend. From far it looks quite uniformed without design. 

Close up on option 1

Option 2 Boucle fabric in brown with multi-colour threads

Close up on option 2

Fabric.com had a generous sale on wool blend fabrics so I was able to snatch these up at a great price. I also bought quite a bit just in case I had errors in production. I must say I was surprised a bit when I received my package. I don't think they do a very good job at photographing the fabrics for the site. Also I noticed some of the descriptions attached to some fabrics are incorrect. The colours are a lot more vivid than I expected which is not particularly what I wanted. I am most likely going to make my coat with fabric Option 1 as I find it most appealing.

The patterns

I would like to make myself a collar-less coat or one with a collar tie. There are a few pattern options available on Burdastyle for the collarless but I feel quite adventurous. Making my own pattern should be fun, right? If anyone knows of links to great resources for construction please let me know. 

As for hubby he's going to get his coat made from Vogue pattern V8940 Men's Jacket  most likely at a shorter length. It seems like a great pattern and I hope my version comes out well. 

Thanks for reading. We will all be looking forward to my future post on the coats with great anticipation and apprehension.

Has anyone done a coat before? Do you have a link to it?