sewcreatelive: How to Repair a Pulled-Out Seam in Lined Houndstooth Coat

My daughter bought this darling coat at a thrift shop and noticed that it had a pulled-out seam in the back princess seamline. This happened because the houndstooth fabric is a very loose weave, and the person wearing it stressed the seam to the point that the fabric ends pulled out. It can be repaired, as noted in the picture on the right. Here is how to do it.

This seam was a little more difficult to unpick because of the loose weave and because of the tiny topstitching on the princess seam line. But it can be done!

The coat is lined so you need to find a way to get inside the coat. Turn the coat inside out and look for a topstitched seam in the lining. You will usually find it in one of the sleeves, which is where I found this one.

Unpick the seam wide, since the coat is big and bulky. You will topstitch it closed when the repair is finished. Now pull the coat inside out through this hole.

Unpick the seam to repair at least 1" beyond what you need to repair.

Only the side panel fabric is damaged, not the center back piece. I made a patch to go under the fabric to repair it and give it strength for future stress. I used a piece of black broadcloth, cut larger than the repair area. Pin it to the back side of the damaged fabric.

Try to straighten out the houndstooth fabric weave as best you can. Then pin a little more. You will be sewing over those loose threads. If I had more time, I could have tried to re-weave the fabric back into the houndstooth weave, but that would have made me go crazy.!

Put the fabric under the machine and start stitching. Using black thread, I tried to stay on the black part of the weave as much as possible to hide my stitches. This could also be sewn by hand and be nearly invisible.

Here are pictures of the repaired area. It is now strengthened. If I had just cut off the damaged fabric threads, it would have made the coat back too small and it would look funny.

Now pin the princess seam back together.

Now stitch the seam, backstitching at both ends. You can trim out some of the patch fabric if it's bulky.

Now turn the coat back right side out through the sleeve lining opening. Take your time so that you don't stress the seams.

Now check the seam to see how it looks.

This next part is very difficult to explain and show with pictures. I needed to topstitch the princess seam again so I pinned the seamline with the seam allowances going towards center back. As you topstitch, you do not want to stitch through to the lining. The stitching has to be just through the outer coat. In order to do this, you have to position this seam under the presser foot, but also have the lining positioned so that it is in the sleeve lining opening. Then you can topstitch the princess seam. (You could also unpick the bottom hem seam and get into the coat that way.)