I'm actually looking into making the coat, by the way; I wasn't just idly musing. It'll be a good warmup for doing the Vash coat, which has *far* more complication if I'm going to do it right. The State Alchemist unform is pretty simple by comparison; I'm thinking it can be built off of a standard trench coat pattern. Although the actual uniform has a seperate "skirt" that belts on below the short jacket, which gives it the appearance of a tailed trench coat at a distance, for ease of use I will probably make the tail section a seperate part that snaps underneath the jacket, so it can be worn with any old jeans. A winter liner is also a possiblity, depending on how easy that ends up being to accomplish. I will probably have to borrow Bummy's machine for it; doing it by hand will take bloody forever, and my treadle machine, while admirable enough for small projects and things like curtains that won't get worn anywhere, is probably not quite up for a heavy jacket that will likely take a pounding. I'll also have to borrow her expertise at intervals, but then again you probably knew that. #grins#

The other nice thing is that if I keep blogging on the status of my projects, it tends to keep me working on them more studiously than I would otherwise.