Winter’s not over yet and there’s still time to draft and sew your own coat or cape. So, take a trip to your local fabric store or shop online and find that fabulous wool, cashmere, boucle, melton, alpaca, mohair, camel hair, gabardine or any fabric of your dreams and then start drafting! You could even make a sustainable patchwork coat or cape by upcycling your old clothes or fabric scraps. Turn that something old into new again!

We have two coat lessons to choose from: a wrap coat and a cape. Both of these designs, start with converting your previously drafted jacket & sleeve slopers into a coat slopers adding in wearing ease to accommodate the number of layers that may be worn underneath the coat or cape.

Getting Started

University of Fashion’s coat drafting series begins with converting your women’s jacket & sleeve slopers into coat slopers (Image credit: University of Fashion).

As every pattern maker/designer knows…having a complete set of slopers is the foundation for designing anything your creative brain can imagine.

The path for creating your own set of bespoke slopers starts with these two lessons: Drafting a Shoulder Dart Bodice Sloper from Measurements and drafting a Straight Sleeve. For the coat sleeve, start by drafting a Fitted  Sleeve from Your Straight Sleeve Sloper, then Convert the Fitted Sleeve to a Suit Sleeve. You will also need to convert your bodice sloper to a torso sloper in our lesson, Convert Bodice Sloper to Torso Sloper and then Convert the Fitted Torso Sloper to a Suit Sloper.  Now you are ready to learn how to convert both the suit jacket and sleeve to a coat slopers in this lesson, Convert a Women’s Suit Jacket Sloper to a Coat Sloper.

Our wrap coat lesson includes how to draft a shawl collar, patch pockets, a tie belt and a full lining. Our cape lesson includes how to draft a hood, plan for buttons & buttonholes, and how to line the cape.

We wish you a lot of fun drafting and then sewing one or both of  these classic coat styles.