This is "Child's Hunt Coat" by Jean Hardy Pattern No. 880
Blasted thing. I am really hating this and can't believe I agreed to make 3 of them! sigh...

Can someone tell me what this means:
"Pad stitch lapel area by hand, rolling lapel over hand."

This is right after you sew twill tape just inside the lapel line. There is only one layer of fabric so I don't see what they are sewing to what and have no clue what "pad stitch" means.

off to whine and pull some more hair out and cross my fingers and hope someone here can tell me what this means

Well, this doesn't look very helpful, but it does have some info on what a padstitch would look like.

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~lizjones429/farsetto.html

Good luck!

No clue what that is......sounds hard though! I want to see the finished product, I bet it will be stunning :)

This website has instructions that make some sense:

Pad-stitching Lapels (Fig. 335)
Pad-stitching is an essential part of tailoring a coat, and in the absolute sense should form a perfect series of "V" stitches when completed. The right lapel is always commenced from the top of the crease line and the left from the bottom, so that width of canvas is worked equally over the lapel by the pad-stitching.

Insert the needle and silk from right to left, making sure not to take the stitch untidily through the material on the underneath. Continue to work down the lapel by stitches as above and, when at the end of the crease line, work back by inserting the point of the needle into the hole of the previous stitch and draw the silk through from right to left. Similarly, connect up the stitches in rows of "V" lines to extend to the edge of the lapel. In practice, these stitches do not often form perfect "V" marks as the tune spent on padding the lapel would be too long, and so it is necessary to spread the stitches out more.

http://vintagesewing.info/1940s/4x-lgcm/illust/335-t.jpg

http://vintagesewing.info/1940s/4x-lgcm/lgcm-21.html

some places mentioned pad stitching using a blind hem stitch on a machine.

Here's a site with shortcuts:
http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/textiles/heg198.htm

Just had to send you a smooch :smooch: - I hope you finish with it soon!