The Ledger.

Jonathan has finished the pattern for a flight jacket in navy wool, and Dorota has everything she needs to make the first sample. It's first in the queue. The collar is genuine sheepskin, the waistband has no elastic and the topstitching goes in a heavier thread.

A box of cuttings arrived from Mallalieus, and two of them are genuinely beautiful. I've bought all 35 metres of one, a doeskin in Deep Navy. I won't know whether it works for the Hunter for a while yet. There are lots of samples to get through in cheaper cloth first.

Development on the quilted jacket has taken far longer than I expected. The next decision is the zip: two-way, in antique brass, to sit against the sand-coloured Ventile.

I had the armhole backwards.

In November I blamed the tightness on the high armhole I'd taken from dress uniform. After talking it through with Giuliano, it turns out to be the opposite. The armhole is too big.

A large armhole joins the sleeve to the body lower down, so more of the coat is attached to the arm. Reach forward and the sleeve drags the whole front of the coat with it. A smaller, higher armhole sits close under the arm, and the sleeve can move while the body stays where it is.

It looks like the tighter option. It's the one that lets you move.

Jonathan's time is limited over the next few months, so I've commissioned another pattern cutter to refine the silhouette. The main focus is to improve movement in the shoulder and allow the sleeves to move without restriction.

The sample looks right. On the mannequin I'm still so pleased with it. But it doesn't feel right, and I think I know why.

My reading is that it comes from the dress uniforms. A friend dropped off all of his last year, and they formed the basis of the Hampden's structure. They gave the coat its shape, but dress uniform is designed for form over function. A high armhole lets a soldier salute without the whole jacket lifting. What it doesn't account for is the shoulders rotating forward. On parade, shoulders are pulled right back. Most of us have spent our lives hunched over a keyboard.

At my size the restriction wasn't noticeable. But when I put the large sample on a number of people, I kept getting the same feedback: "It looks great, but I can feel a tightness across the front of my shoulders."

The fix is in the armhole and the sleeve. The underarm point comes up by 13mm, the lower front of the armhole is scooped out by 3mm, and the sleeve rotates eight degrees forward, with a little more height at the front of the sleeve crown. That gives more movement across the shoulders and keeps the look and shape of the coat.

Between pattern cutting and sampling, this adds two months. I've written to everyone who has ordered to explain, and to offer a full refund to anyone who would rather not wait.

Wearing the pre-production sample, I can raise my arm 90 degrees in front of me, and that's it. It's too obvious a problem to ignore, so I've made the hard decision to stop and fix the pattern.

The Hampden opened to subscribers at 11 this morning, and the first orders are in. Each one will be made to order over twelve weeks.

The Anson and the Slingsby went on sale to subscribers at 11 this morning, with everyone else in 48 hours. It took 18 samples to get the Anson right and 12 for the Slingsby. The first orders came in the same day.

Giuliano, who spent more than 30 years at one of Britain's best-known menswear houses, is going over the quilted jacket. I've sent him the spec and explained why the body changed: worn open, the jacket we started from looked almost bell shaped and wide across the hips.