Getting started with seams

Yesterday, I got the main body seams on the striped half of the coat finished. I figured I would do the stripe first as the white and the pattern would be more forgiving of error. By the time I sew the red half of the coat, I will be better practised at it, especially around the pockets. There are princess seams where the side back and side fronts attach and for those, I folded the seam allowance over and sewed the seams down in a proper flat fell.

In this photo of the back, you can see I balanced the centre back seam with a modified flat fell, while the side back seams are the true flat fell.

There are pockets on the front side seam. I cut out four pieces of lining that I had left over from some other projects - plain white for the striped side and red for the red. I am hoping the fact that there will be two pockets on top of each other will not make that section of the coat bulky.

I have both front sections on the ironing board. The far one is wrong side up with the pocket folded over.

I have decided to sew the collar by itself and attach it when I sew the coat together at the neck. I have been stewing over how to do the collar and I was going to attach each piece to each half and then sew round the entire perimeter. But now I think this will be neater and as a plus, I will have the neck edges sewn together firmly.